Cibrarp  of  Che  Cheological  Aetnmarip 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 


FROM  THE  LIBRARY  OF 
ROBERT  ELLIOTT  SPEER 


15D4; 

.M3T 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
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A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

AND  ITS  SPIRITUAL  VALUES 


A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

AND  ITS  SPIRITUAL  VALUES 

ppm 

k.  • 

BY 


ALFRED  W.  MARTIN  ^  , 


AUTHOR  OF  “THE  WORLD’S  GREAT  RELIGIONS  AND  THE  RELIGI05T"  ' 
OF  THE  FUTURE,”  “PSYCHIC  TENDENCIES  OF  TO-DAY,”  ETC. 


J.  < 


D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  LONDON  ::  MCMXXIII 


COPYRIGHT,  1923,  BY 

D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


FOREWORD 

This  book  may  be  described  as  a  revised  and 
much  enlarged  edition  of  the  author’s  What 
Human  Life  Is  For which  has  been  out  of 
print  for  the  past  five  years. 

The  reader  is  asked  to  remember  that  the 
author’s  views  commit  no  one  but  himself.  He 
speaks  not  for  the  Ethical  Fellowship,  but 
merely  as  a  member  of  it,  free  to  hold  and 
express  whatever  philosophical  or  theological 
ideas  commend  themselves  to  him,  provided 
only  that  he  makes  no  one  but  himself  sponsor 
for  them. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. 

Happiness  s  e  * 

PAGE 

1 

II. 

"W  EALTH  •  «««««• 

12 

III. 

Health 

22 

• 

HH 

Culture . 

26 

V. 

The  Key  to  a  Satisfying 
Answer . 

31 

IV. 

Is  Death  the  End?  . 

53 

VII. 

Spiritual  Values  .... 

66 

VIII. 

A  Balanced  Life  .... 

68 

IX. 

The  Threefold  Xnvigoration  . 

72 

X. 

Poise  in  Bereavement  . 

74 

XI. 

Proof  against  Practical  Skep¬ 
ticism  . 

77 

XII. 

Modern  Discoveries  and  Re¬ 
ligious  Anchorage  . 

81 

XIII. 

N o  Final  Philosophy  of  Life 

86 

XIV. 

The  Contribution  of  Jesus  . 

89 

XV. 

The  Ethics  of  Jesus  and  the 
Ethical  Movement  . 

92 

XVI. 

The  Never-ending  Pursuit  of 
the  Ideal . 

94 

vii 


✓ 


INTRODUCTION 


To  furnish  an  interpretation  of  life  as  a 
rational,  ordered  and  consistent  whole,  to 
enthrone,  as  sovereign,  an  end  to  which  all 
other  ends  must  be  subordinate,  to  point  to  an 
ultimate  human  destiny  commensurate  with 
that  supreme  and  commanding  end — these,  I 
take  it,  are  salient  functions  of  philosophy 
applied  to  life.  At  any  rate,  without  making 
the  slightest  pretense  to  an  all-comprehensive 
definition  of  a  philosophy  of  life,  this  statement 
of  what  it  involves  will  suffice  for  the  practical 
purposes  of  the  present  discussion.  After  all, 
every  philosophy  of  life  has  for  its  immediate 
practical  concern  not  the  terminus  a  quo  but 
the  terminus  ad  quern  of  human  aspiration  and 
endeavor.  In  other  words,  its  prime  purpose 
is  to  find  and  put  forth  the  true  answer  to  that 

most  vital  of  all  questions — What  is  human 

• 

IX 


X 


INTRODUCTION 


life  for?  And,  in  arriving  at  the  answer,  an¬ 
other  of  the  crucial  questions  of  life  will  be 
simultaneously  answered — Is  life  worth  liv¬ 
ing?  For,  according  as  the  ultimate  object  of 
human  desire  and  pursuit  has  worth  or  is 
worthless,  so  will  life  be,  or  not  be,  worth  liv¬ 
ing.  As  is  the  ideal,  that  is,  the  mental  picture 
of  what  it  is  supremely  desirable  that  life 
should  be,  so  will  the  life  be.  The  picture  may 
be  noble  or  vulgar,  exalted  or  debased,  but 
what  we  thus  look  out  upon  from  the  window 
of  the  soul  determines  the  character  of  our  life. 

Let  us  then  consider  some  of  the  more  im¬ 
portant  answers  that  have  been  given  to  this 
question  that  lies  at  the  heart  of  every  phi¬ 
losophy  of  life,  and  then,  by  a  process  of 
elimination,  endeavor  to  arrive  at  the  true 


answer. 


A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

AND  ITS  SPIRITUAL  VALUES 


A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

AND  ITS  SPIRITUAL  VALUES 

I 

HAPPINESS 

Undoubtedly  the  most  popular  of  all 
answers  is  happiness;  for  the  vast  majority 
of  men  and  women  start  out  in  life  bent  on 
achieving  their  own  personal  happiness.  And 
by  happiness  they  usually  mean  the  gratifica¬ 
tion  of  immediate  or  prospective  desire;  the 
getting  out  of  life  all  the  various  enjoyments 
it  can  yield,  reaching  out  for  the  rich  clusters 
of  pleasure  that  hang  on  the  vine  of  oppor¬ 
tunity.  And  whatever  the  particular  type  of 
pleasure  be  to  which  these  people  look  for¬ 
ward,  it  seems  to  be  always  in  reach  and 
therefore  it  is  constantly  pursued.  What 

though,  like  Juno,  in  the  ancient  Greek  myth, 

1 


2  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


this  happiness  turns  out  to  be  only  a  cold  and 
clammy  cloud  in  their  embrace !  What 
though  three  quarters  of  life  has  consisted  of 
unhappiness,  there  still  remains  one  quarter 
in  which  the  pursuit  may  be  renewed!  Small 
wonder,  then,  that  many  go  down  to  their 
graves  fondly  believing  that  if  they  had  had 
one  more  chance,  the  happiness  which  so  often 
escaped  them  would  have  been  theirs. 

But  this  is  an  altogether  vain  and  pathetic 
delusion.  For  happiness  is  not  an  entity,  not 
a  substance,  not  something  that  can  be  kept 
under  lock  and  key  to  be  taken  out  at  will. 
On  the  contrary,  happiness  always  eludes  its 
pursuer.  Happiness  is  an  exquisite  surprise 
which  comes  to  us  when  we  have  abandoned  all 
thought  of  it.  To  get  it  we  must  forget  it. 
No  one  has  vindicated  this  truth  more  clearly 
or  forcibly  than  Goethe,  in  his  masterpieces — 
Wilhelm  Meister  and  Faust .  They  take  their 
place  by  the  side  of  Homer’s  Iliad Dante’s 
Divine  Comedy ,  the  great  plays  of  Shake¬ 
speare,  Browning’s  Ring  and  the  Book. 


HAPPINESS 


3 


Why?  Because,  like  these,  Goethe’s  novel  and 
drama  have  the  quality  of  being  inexhaustible. 
What  is  the  test  of  a  masterpiece?  It  is  its 
power  to  grow  with  our  growth,  so  that  each 
time  we  come  back  to  it  with  the  key  of  our 
enlarged  experience  we  unlock  treasures  not 
found  there  before.  The  best  things  in  litera¬ 
ture  are  those  that  reveal  their  meaning  more 
and  more  the  oftener  we  return  to  them,  each 
time  rewarding  us,  either  with  some  new  per¬ 
ception  of  truth,  or  some  new  appreciation  of 
beauty,  or  perchance  with  both. 

What  is  it  that  makes  these  two  works  of 
Goethe  so  absorbingly  interesting  and  so 
stimulating  ethically?  It  is  the  way  in  which 
they  deal  with  this  fundamental  question — 
What  is  human  life  for?  Goethe  took  a  con¬ 
crete  human  type,  an  ordinary,  average 
young  man  and  told  the  story  of  his  experi¬ 
ence,  showing  that,  if  happiness  be  what 
human  life  is  for,  then  it  will  not  do  to  pursue 
it  deliberately  and  directly  as  the  immediate 
object  of  our  endeavor,  because,  if  it  comes 


4  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


at  all,  it  can  be  only  as  the  surprise-sequel  to 
some  worth-while  work  in  which  we  are  en¬ 
gaged.  To  be  gotten  it  must  be  forgotten. 
Goethe  demonstrated,  by  means  of  these  typi¬ 
cal  examples  (Wilhelm  Meister  and  Faust), 
that  if  the  lustrous  jewel,  happiness,  is  to  shine 
at  all,  it  can  be  only  in  the  golden  setting  of 
a  life  consecrated  to  some  worthy  end. 

Wilhelm,  you  remember,  started  out  in  life 
as  most  young  men  are  apt  to  start — as  a 
thoroughgoing  eudaemonist — that  is,  one  bent 
on  achieving  his  own  individual  happiness. 
He  aims  first  of  all  at  the  gratification  of  his 
physical  desires  and  by  excessive  indulgence 
reaps  the  inevitable  result.  Thoughtlessly, 
recklessly  he  sacrifices  everybody  and  every¬ 
thing  to  the  gratification  of  his  selfish  ends. 
Put  far  from  bringing  him  the  desired  happi¬ 
ness,  he  finds  that  his  excesses  have  spun  for 
him  a  web  of  difficulties  and  trials  from  which 
he  extricates  himself  only  by  the  most  earnest 
effort.  Sickness  and  disease  lay  hold  on  him 
and  he  is  brought  nigh  to  the  point  of  death. 


HAPPINESS  5 

For  it  is  Nature’s  immutable  law  that  “what¬ 
soever  a  man  soweth  that  shall  he  also  reap.” 
Nor  does  Nature  ever  let  us  go  unpunished 
if  her  laws  are  disobeyed.  Taught  by  severe 
suffering  the  futility  of  seeking  happiness  on 
the  physical  plane,  Wilhelm  turns  to  that  of 
the  intellect  and  forthwith  changes  his  former 
habits  and  associates.  He  will  now  have  intel¬ 
lectual  and  aesthetic  culture;  culture  of  man¬ 
ners  and  of  mind.  But  when  he  comes  into 
contact  with  certain  of  the  local  literati  and 
discovers  how  little  mind  he  actually  has — 
what  a  mere  bourgeois  he  is  among  these 
literary  aristocrats — he  grows  disheartened 
and  discouraged  and  finds  he  is  still  as  far 
off  as  ever  from  the  happiness  he  pursues, 
albeit  the  pursuit  of  culture  is  nobler  than  that 
of  gratifying  the  senses.  But  this  higher  pur¬ 
suit  has  done  one  invaluable  service  for  him. 
It  has  awakened  an  interest  in  his  fellow  men 
to  such  a  degree  that  he  takes  up  the  study 
of  medicine.  And  when,  at  length,  he  has 
entered  the  medical  profession  and  is  engaged 


6  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

in  its  beneficent  tasks;  when  lie  finds  himself 
healing  the  sick,  curing  disease,  alleviating 
pain,  he  tastes  a  contentment  and  satisfaction 
such  as  he  never  experienced  before.  In 
other  words,  when  he  has  abandoned  all 
thought  of  happiness  and  is  busily  engaged  in 
work  that  is  eminently  worth  while,  happiness 
comes  to  him. 

Some  years  ago  in  one  of  my  ethics  classes 
the  pupils  were  asked  to  state  the  lesson 
taught  by  Goethe  in  this  work.  One  of  them 
replied,  “We  all  should  become  doctors.”  So, 
indeed,  it  would  seem,  but  the  novelist  used 
the  practice  of  medicine  simply  as  an  example 
of  worth-while  work  in  consecrated  devotion 
to  which  happiness  comes  as  a  surprise-sequel. 

Turn  we  now  to  Faust.  Here  the  selfsame 
message  is  brought  home  to  us,  only  with  still 
more  cogency  and  clearness.  No  thoughtful 
reader  of  this  drama  can  fail  to  see  the  place 
of  happiness  in  Goethe’s  philosophy  of  life. 
Mephistopheles,  you  will  remember,  has  made 
a  contract  with  Faust,  who,  like  Wilhelm,  is 


HAPPINESS 


7 


an  average,  ordinary,  typical  young  man  and 
a  eudffimonist.  The  tempter  promises  him 
every  conceivable  form  of  delight,  but  on  one 
condition,  namely,  that  when  the  moment  of 
supreme  bliss  shall  have  arrived — the  moment 
in  which  he  will  exclaim,  “Vervoeile,  du  hist 
scJion' "  (Stay,  thou  art  fair) — then  he  shall 
give  his  soul  over  to  Mephistopheles  forever. 
The  contract  is  closed,  the  deal  is  on.  Mephis¬ 
topheles  begins  by  beguiling  the  young  man 
with  every  species  of  physical  pleasure.  But 
this,  as  in  the  case  of  Wilhelm,  only  brings 
retribution  and  remorse  in  its  train.  Faust 
pays  the  exact  penalty  in  suffering  and  disease 
for  every  violation  of  Nature’s  laws.  Then 
follows  the  awakening  of  Faust;  his  entrance 
into  the  affairs  of  statesmanship  and  intel¬ 
lectual  pursuits,  symbolized  by  the  flight  to 
Greece  and  conversations  with  the  phantoms 
of  Greek  and  Egyptian  mythology. 

Yet  not  even  here,  any  more  than  in  the 
former  field  of  pursuit,  is  the  sought-for  hap¬ 
piness  found.  Faust  passes  through  precisely 


8  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


the  same  kind  of  experiences  as  were  met  with 
in  the  development  of  Wilhelm.  Like  the  lat¬ 
ter,  Faust  discovers  that  the  object  of  his 
pursuit  is  after  all  an  ignis  fatuus. 

Then  comes  the  illuminating  finale  of  the 
drama.  Not  far  from  Faust’s  home  there  lay 
a  large  tract  of  marshy  land,  emitting  miasma 
and  causing  malarial  disease.  He  conceives 
the  idea  of  draining  this  marshy  tract  and  fit¬ 
ting  it  for  human  habitation.  The  very  idea 
gives  him  an  unprecedented  sense  of  satisfac¬ 
tion  and  pleasure.  And  when,  at  last,  as  an 
old  man,  he  climbs  the  tower  that  commands 
a  view  of  the  redeemed  area  and  contemplates 
the  benefit  it  will  confer  on  generations  not  yet 
born,  the  moment  of  supreme  bliss  has  ar¬ 
rived.  “Verwede,  du  bist  schon  ”  he  exclaims, 
and  falls  back  dead;  not,  however,  into  the 
arms  of  Mephistopheles,  but  into  those  of  the 
heavenly  hosts  who  translate  him  in  triumph 
to  the  skies. 

Nearly  one  hundred  years  have  passed  since 
these  masterpieces  of  moral  instruction  were 


HAPPINESS 


9 


produced,  but  the  doctrine  of  happiness  which 
they  set  forth  has  lost  none  of  its  significance 
during  the  decades  that  have  intervened.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  a  doctrine  we  need  to 
rehearse  and  reassimilate;  to  grasp  and  then 
fix  in  our  minds.  We  need  to  feel,  as  Wilhelm 
and  Faust  were  made  to  feel,  that  something 
must  take  precedence  over  happiness.  That 
cannot  be  the  immediate  object  of  our  pursuit; 
it  can  be  only,  as  Goethe  intended  to  teach,  the 
surprise-sequel  to  some  worthy  work  in  which 
we  are  engaged. 

Ah,  this  ever-recurring  demand  for  happi¬ 
ness,  it  is  the  subtle  poison  of  our  lives!  We 
must  outgrow  it  and  learn  to  assign  it  its  true 
and  lawful  place.  In  our  nobler  moods  we 
realize  that  deeper  than  our  desire  to  be 
happy  and  to  avoid  pain  is  the  desire  to  touch 
those  deeps  of  life  where  there  is  a  joy  which 
is  more  than  happiness  and  which  may  involve 
pain.  The  hunger  for  truth,  the  yearning  for 
love,  the  passion  for  personal  progress,  these 
are  three  desiderata  which  every  earnest  soul 


10  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


wants,  even  at  the  price  of  pain.  What  trial 
and  tribulation  would  we  not  willingly  face, 
rather  than  remain  ignorant  of  the  meaning 
and  mystery  of  the  world  in  which  we  live? 
What  agony  would  we  not  willingly  endure 
rather  than  be  incapable  of  love  with  its  deep 
below  deep  of  revealing?  What  bitterest 
truth  would  we  not  prefer  to  any  sugar-coated 
fiction?  ’Tis  the  path  of  truth,  of  love,  of 
soul-growth  that  we  crave  and  choose,  even 
though  we  have  to  walk  it  with  aching  heart 
and  bleeding  feet. 

Nor  indeed  is  this  a  new  gospel.  Rather  is 
it  the  gospel  anew — the  same  gospel,  forsooth, 
that  shines  forth  from  the  pages  of  the  Bibles 
of  all  the  great  religions.  It  sings  in  the 
noble  hymns  of  the  Veda — the  oldest  portion 
of  what  is  probably  the  oldest  Bible  in  the 
world.  Gotama,  the  Buddha,  brought  it  to 
the  distracted  people  of  India;  Confucius 
carried  it  to  the  congressional  halls  of  China; 
Zoroaster  breathed  it  in  the  noble  prayers  of 
the  “Avesta”;  Mohammed  made  it  the  sub- 


HAPPINESS 


11 


ject  of  his  meditation  on  the  Arabian  desert; 
Jesus  preached  it  on  the  shores  of  Galilee; 
Paul  proclaimed  it  in  Corinth  and  in  Asia 
Minor;  Dante  sang  it  in  the  cantos  of  The 
Divine  Comedy ;  Savonarola  thundered  it  from 
the  pulpit  of  the  Duomo;  Tolstoi  took  it  for 
the  dominant  thought  of  his  noblest  novel, 
Anna  Karenina — the  gospel  of  happiness  sub¬ 
ordinate  to  service  and  this,  in  truth,  the 
gateway  to  the  truly  religious  life.  For  he 
alone  is  the  truly  religious  man  who  inwardly 
dedicates  and  outwardly  devotes  himself  to 
knowledge  of  all  truth  he  can  learn  in  order 
to  do  what  is  right  and  be  what  is  good. 


II 


WEALTH 

If  happiness  be  not  the  true  answer  to  the 
question  at  issue,  is  it,  perchance,  wealth? 
Suppose  I  have  a  conviction  that  wealth  is 
what  human  life  is  for  and  that  the  chief  end 
of  gold  is  to  get  more  gold.  In  that  case  I 
will  bend  all  my  energies  on  making  money 
and,  other  things  being  equal,  I  will  probably 
get  rich,  because  that  to  which  we  devote  our¬ 
selves  with  undivided  attention  and  whole- 
souled  allegiance  we  are  very  apt  to  acquire. 
But,  now,  if  I  thus  give  myself  over  to  making 
all  the  money  I  can,  what  worth  will  there  be 
in  me?  By  a  beneficent  social  law  my  accu¬ 
mulated  fortune  will  be  made  to  serve  the  gen¬ 
eral  good,  but  will  my  life  have  been  worth 
living?  What  essential  worth  can  there  be 

in  a  mere  money-maker?  Has  he  not  atro- 

12 


WEALTH 


13 


phied  every  higher  power  of  his  nature  by  thus 
surrendering  himself  to  this  Mammonic  am¬ 
bition?  Has  he  not  crushed  his  soul  under 
a  huge  stack  of  stocks  and  bonds?  Has  he 
not  turned  his  back  on  every  shining  ideal 
and  made  himself  as  truly  a  thing  as  the 
machine  that  mints  his  gold?  Surely  it  is  time 
for  ethics  to  vindicate  the  truth  that  when  a 
man  converts  himself  into  a  mere  money¬ 
maker  he  commits  spiritual  suicide. 

What  was  the  lesson  taught  us  by  the  last 
financial  panic,  with  its  record  of  industrial, 
commercial  and  domestic  disasters?  The  les¬ 
son  was  that,  if  making  money  be  what  human 
life  is  for,  then  many  a  man  and  woman  must 
have  scored  failure.  For,  during  those  years 
of  business  depression  and  financial  disorder, 
our  investments  did  not  pay,  our  securities 
shrank,  our  incomes  were  reduced,  the  water 
was  squeezed  out  of  our  stocks,  dividends  were 
not  forthcoming  from  what  seemed  a  ‘ ‘pur¬ 
chase. In  the  face  of  these  misfortunes  they 
who  lived  for  making  money  had  no  alterna- 


14  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

tive  but  to  confess  their  life  a  failure.  But, 
if,  besides  aiming  to  make  money,  we  cared 
also  for  literature,  for  science,  for  art,  for 
personal  development  and  social  service,  then 
we  knew  that  whether  our  bank  account 
showed  a  decrease  or  not,  we  lived  for  “the 
eternal  treasures  of  the  soul,  such  as  cannot  be 
burned  on  the  funeral  pyre  nor  buried  in  the 
earth,”  to  quote  the  fine  phrase  of  Plato. 
Undoubtedly  true  it  is,  as  some  one  has  said, 
that  more  men  are  trying  to  get  rich  than  are 
trying  to  be  good ;  but  find  the  field  of  the  most 
profound  struggle  and  the  most  passionate 
striving  and  it  will  not  be  where  men  have 
grown  haggard  with  the  thirst  for  gold.  It 
will  be  where  some  human  soul  is  defying  its 
temptation  and  battling  for  its  spiritual  life. 
You  and  I  may  mourn  that  so  much  of  our 
time  is  devoted  to  the  pursuit  of  ephemeral 
ends,  but  the  great  moments  that  stand  out 
in  our  life  are  those  in  which  we  surrendered 
ourselves  to  the  claim  of  truth,  in  which  we 
loved  devotedly,  in  which  we  caught  a  vision 


WEALTH 


15 


of  Duty  and  saw  that  to  spend  ourselves  and 
be  spent  in  a  worthy  cause  is  to  live. 

No  thoughtful  observer  of  American  life 
can  fail  to  note  that  thousands  of  people  are 
living  under  the  inspiration  of  a  false  ideal 
and  suffering  from  a  moral  disease.  That 
false  ideal,  that  mental  picture  of  what  it  is 
supremely  desirable  to  have,  is  wealth;  that 
moral  disease  is  pleonexia1  (from  the  Greek 
pleorij  more,  and  echein,  to  have )  the  grasping 
disease,  the  passion  to  have  more  and  still 
more,  without  limit.  We  saw  a  symptom  of 
this  disease,  not  long  ago,  in  the  case  of  those 
trust  companies  that  dishonored  their  trustee¬ 
ship  of  the  funds  committed  to  their  care  for 
safe  investment,  by  using  them  for  private 
speculation.  Another  symptom  appeared  in 
the  case  of  those  bank  officials  who  organized 
themselves  into  a  real  estate  association  and 
financed  it  with  the  deposits  of  their  unsus¬ 
pecting  customers.  Still  another  symptom  is 


1 1  am  indebted  to  Dr.  Adler  for  the  use  of  this  descriptive 
term. 


16  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


seen  in  the  case  of  those  fathers  who  have  only 
a  modest  income  on  which  to  support  their 
families,  yet  venture  to  invest  an  unwarranted 
portion  of  it  in  doubtful  mining  propositions 
that  promise  “quick  and  large  returns.”  The 
familiar  varieties  of  graft  (like  hysteria,  it 
takes  on  innumerable  forms)  furnish  another 
symptom  of  the  disease,  as  do  also  the  em¬ 
bezzlements  and  defalcations  of  which  persons 
in  all  walks  of  life  have  been  found  guilty. 
But  not  to  dwell  at  greater  length  upon  the 
symptoms,  let  us  note  at  once  the  fearful 
results.  Just  this  disease  it  is  that  to-day  is 
undermining  the  moral  health  of  our  Ameri¬ 
can  citizenship,  polluting  the  fountain  springs 
of  our  political  and  industrial  life  and  develop¬ 
ing  among  us  a  moneyed  aristocracy — the 
meanest,  the  most  contemptible  of  all  aristoc¬ 
racies.  It  is  this  disease,  too,  that  is  per¬ 
petuating  a  false  standard  of  success  which 
captivates  young  men  and  women  and  tempts 
them  to  sacrifice  every  shred  of  honorable  man¬ 
hood  and  womanhood  in  order  to  attain  it. 


WEALTH 


17 


Mr.  Austen  Hopkinson,  one  of  the  largest 
engineering  employers  of  labor  in  England, 
recently  astonished  the  House  of  Commons  by 
demanding  a  revolution  in  the  attitude  of  the 
employing  class.  The  employer,  he  main¬ 
tained,  is  too  eager  to  get  rich  and  the  em¬ 
ployees  will  not  do  their  best  to  make  him 
a  multimillionaire.  He  argued  that  the 
employer  must  refuse  to  become  a  Croesus, 
and  must  prove  to  his  workmen  that  he  would 
not  take  the  extra  profits  from  the  extra  pro¬ 
duction  their  labor  had  brought  about.  Sir 
Frederick  Banbury  remarked  that  it  was  not 
“human  nature.”  But  there  it  was,  actualized 
in  the  human  nature  of  Mr.  Hopkinson.  “I 
have  determined,”  he  said,  “that  under  no  cir¬ 
cumstances  shall  such  an  appalling  fate — the 
fate  of  becoming  a  multimillionaire — over¬ 
take  me,  and  the  men  at  my  works  know  it; 
in  consequence  the  production  has  increased 
enormously.  The  men  know  that  they  do  not 
add  to  my  income  by  their  extra  production.” 
Who  can  doubt  that  if  the  mentality  repre- 


18  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


sented  by  Mr.  Hopkinson  were  to  prevail  in 
big  business,  industrial  peace  would  be  as¬ 
sured.  Contrast  the  attitude  and  spirit  exhib¬ 
ited  by  this  industrial  revolutionary  with  that 
of  the  wealthy  paper  manufacturer  who,  in 
response  to  my  remark,  “by  this  time  you  must 
be  a  veritable  Croesus,”  replied,  “I  don’t  know 
who  in  creation  Croesus  is,  but  I’ll  match  him 
dollar  for  dollar.” 

That  expresses  the  spirit,  the  temper,  the 
ambition  cherished  by  thousands  of  people  of 
our  own  time  and  place.  And  I  hold  that  you 
and  I  have  not  taken  the  first  step  toward 
remedying  this  evil  until  we  are  prepared  to 
say,  in  all  sincerity,  “I  would  not  be  a  Croesus 
if  I  could.”  But  the  question  irresistibly  arises 
— “Why  not  be  a  Croesus  if  you  could?”  The 
question  is  altogether  too  large  to  dwell  upon 
at  length.  But  at  least  one  or  two  reasons 
may  be  offered.  In  the  first  place  then  (speak¬ 
ing  only  for  myself)  I  would  not  be  a  Croesus 
if  I  could,  because,  taking  the  economic 
world  as  it  is  now  constituted,  I  do  not  see 


WEALTH 


19 


how  it  is  possible  for  any  one  to  be  a  multi¬ 
millionaire  without  somehow,  somewhere, 
doing  injury  to  some  other  human  being; 
and  I,  for  one,  do  not  wish  to  go  through  life 
with  the  haunting  sense  of  having  accumulated 
a  fabulous  fortune  at  the  price  of  injustice  or 
oppression  to  another  human  soul. 

Again,  the  effort  to  become  a  Croesus  so 
saps  the  vital  energies  that  when,  at  last,  the 
fortune  has  been  acquired  one  has  not  the 
physical  wherewithal  to  make  enjoyment  of 
it  possible.  Think  only  of  that  German 
Croesus  who  offered  a  million  dollars  to  any 
physician  who  could  permanently  cure  him 
of  his  chronic  indigestion.  But  why  go  to 
Germany  for  illustration?  Becall  those 
American  Croesuses  who  have  been  in  the  pub¬ 
lic  eye  for  the  past  decade  or  two,  and  note 
how  a  just  Nemesis  has  worked  itself  out  in 
the  case  of  nearly  every  one  of  them,  bringing 
some  to  premature  death,  afflicting  others  with 
chronic  illness  and  dooming  them  to  devote  the 
remainder  of  their  lives  to  the  search  for 


20  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


health.  A  third  reason  for  refusing  to  he  a 
Croesus  is  that  while  he  can  buy  compliments, 
flattery,  popular  acclaim,  there  is  one  thing 
that  all  his  money  cannot  buy  and  that  is  love 
— the  most  precious  thing  in  the  world,  the 
spontaneous  response  in  one  heart  to  the  good 
will  felt  in  another. 

But,  lest  what  has  been  thus  far  said,  be  mis¬ 
understood,  let  me  hasten  to  say  that  wealth 
has  its  legitimate  place  and  purpose  as  a  means 
to  ulterior  ends.  W ealth,  it  should  be  remem¬ 
bered,  is  not  synonymous  with  money,  though 
we  commonly  use  the  terms  “money”  and 
“wealth”  interchangeably.  Money  is  only  a 
medium  of  exchange,  a  symbol  of  wealth,  and 
as  such  it  may  be  indefinitely  increased.  But 
to  wealth  there  is  a  limit  and  that  limit  is 
determined  by  the  ends  it  is  designed  to  serve. 
Providing  for  one’s  self  and  one’s  family; 
securing  the  necessary  sources  for  recreation 
as  a  means  to  continued  efficiency  in  one’s 
working  hours;  supplying  means  for  cultiva¬ 
tion  of  the  higher  zones  of  one’s  being;  laying 


WEALTH 


21 


aside  enough  to  save  one  from  being  a  burden 
on  the  industry  of  others  when  the  time  comes 
in  which  one  can  work  no  more — these  may  be 
set  down  as  among  the  legitimate  ends  which 
wealth  can  serve,  and,  if  we  are  not  to  be 
trapped  by  the  prevailing  false  ideal  of  wealth, 
our  only  safety  lies  in  steadfastly  fixing  our 
eye  on  these  ulterior  ends  and  making  them 
the  measure  of  the  wealth  one  may  ethically 
possess.  “Whatever  is  in  excess  of  one’s 
needs,  rightly  estimated,  is  not  appropriate  to 
one,  not  proper  to  one,  not  his  property.” 


Ill 


HEALTH 

As  an  answer  to  the  question,  What  is 
human  life  for?  health  holds  a  popular  place. 
The  rapid  and  widespread  development  of 
interest  in  drugless  modes  of  healing  that 
to-day  count  their  devotees  by  millions,  attests 
a  philosophy  of  life  in  which  health  is  given 
unprecedented  importance.  Never  before 
were  there  so  many  people  in  the  world  living 
as  though  health  were  what  human  life  is  for. 

They  quote  Emerson’s  dictum, 4 ‘health  is  the 
best  wealth.”  They  appeal  to  self-preserva¬ 
tion  as  “the  first  law  of  Nature.”  They  re¬ 
mind  us  of  Herbert  Spencer’s  saying  that 
“ordinarily  one  half  of  life  is  thrown  away  by 
imperfect  health.”  Health,  they  tell  us,  is  har¬ 
mony,  ease;  the  absence  of  it  is  dis-ease.  As¬ 
suredly  in  each  of  these  contentions  there  lies  a 

measure  of  truth,  yet  each  readily  shades  off 

22 


HEALTH  23 

into  untruth.  Had  we  to  choose  between 
wealth  and  health,  could  we  have  but  one,  we 
certainly  would  not  take  wealth  at  the  expense 
of  health.  For  the  deplorable  fact  about  health 
is  that  thousands  have  to  devote  so  much  time 
to  merely  securing  it.  And  the  very  fact  that 
we  make  this  comment  on  the  pursuit  of  health 
proves  we  do  not  regard  it  as  an  end  in  itself 
but  rather  as  a  means  whereby  some  achieve¬ 
ment  is  made  possible.  When  Emerson  de- 
*  scribed  health  as  the  best  wealth,  he  thought 
of  it  as  a  fundamental  requisite,  first  in  the 
order  of  time,  but  not  to  be  evaluated  as,  in 
itself,  wealth.  It  is  true  that  the  higher  ends 
of  life  are  partly  defeated  by  ill  health,  that 
when  the  body  is  disordered  we  become  less 
sensitive  to  the  impress  of  nature  and  the 
human  spirit;  it  is  true  that  impairment  of 
nerve  force  spells  poorer  thinking,  weakened 
will,  lessened  capacity  for  service.  Yet  to 
make  the  end  and  aim  of  one’s  life  the  main¬ 
tenance  of  health  would  be  like  spending  one’s 
time  and  thought  and  labor  on  the  foundation 


24  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


of  a  house  and  never  proceeding  to  erect  a 
superstructure.  Grant  that  health  is  har¬ 
mony,  ease.  But  ease  is  not  the  best  thing  in 
the  world.  The  fact  is  that  bodily  health  some¬ 
times  proves  to  be  a  kind  of  carnal  luxury,  an 
incentive  to  selfish  indulgence  and,  in  conse¬ 
quence,  a  moral  danger — as  many  a  healthy 
ease-loving  man  and  woman  can  testify.  In  a 
very  real  sense  one  may  lose  one’s  soul  through 
the  very  healthfulness  of  the  body,  even  as  im¬ 
perfect  health  may  be  a  blessing  in  disguise. 
“Give  me  health  and  a  day,”  said  Emerson, 
“and  I  will  make  the  pomp  of  emperors  ridicu¬ 
lous.”  But 'there  are  those  who,  in  all  sin¬ 
cerity,  have  been  able  to  say  give  me  ill  health 
and  a  day  and  we  will  put  imperial  pomp  into 
the  darkest  shade.  They  looked  upon  their 
malady  as  a  sublime  challenge  to  do  their  ut¬ 
most,  being  handicapped.  It  was  no  jest  of 
the  Southern  senator,  who,  when  asked  how 
he  managed  to  achieve  so  much,  replied,  “by 
never  being  very  well.”  The  consolation 
vouchsafed  to  invalids  is  that  pain  has  been 


HEALTH  25 

one  of  the  most  effective  educators  of  the 
human  race.  To  be  able  to  say  to  pain,  “you 
can  have  no  power  over  me  save  as  I  furnish 
the  weapons,”  attests  the  spiritual  nature  in 
man  and  persuades  him  that  his  essential  self¬ 
hood  is  spiritual  and  therefore  cannot  perish. 
The  origin  of  evil  may  be  an  insoluble  prob¬ 
lem,  but  that  this  one  form  of  evil,  pain,  may 
thus  be  turned  to  good,  proves  that  it  is  not 
wholly  evil.  True  it  certainly  is  that  the  fair¬ 
est  and  sweetest  flower  of  spiritual  culture  is 
that  which  has  grown  on  the  tree  of  humanity 
when  watered  by  the  tears  of  suffering. 

From  whichever  side,  therefore,  we  ap¬ 
proach  the  matter  of  health,  it  clearly  is  not 
what  human  life  is  for.  The  most  that  can  be 
claimed  for  it  is  that  it  offers  a  chance,  an 
opportunity  to  attain  something  beyond  itself. 
And  precisely  as  the  raison  d'etre  of  the  foun¬ 
dation  is  the  house,  so  the  justification  of 
health  is  its  conditioning  achievement. 


IV 


CULTURE 

We  come  next  to  “culture”  in  terms  of 
which  a  fourth  answer  to  the  question  at  issue 
has  been  given.  If  we  say  that  human  life  is 
for  culture  we  are  at  once  confronted  with  the 
difficulty  of  determining  what  is  meant  by  cul¬ 
ture.  Mr.  John  Bright  has  told  us  that  culture 
is  “knowledge  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  clas¬ 
sics.”  If  we  accept  his  definition  we  are  forced 
to  conclude  that  a  very  large  portion  of  the 
race  has  missed  the  ultimate  object  of  human 
life.  The  late  distinguished  essayist,  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison,  defined  culture  as  “that 
mental  equipment  which  fits  one  for  criticizing 
new  books.”  But  if  this  equipment  be  culture, 
and  culture  is  what  human  life  is  for,  then 
thousands  of  persons  must  be  set  down  as 
having  failed  in  the  fine  art  of  life.  Again, 

Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  would  fain  have  per- 

26 


CULTURE 


27 


suaded  us  that  culture  is  “acquaintance  with 
the  best  thought  and  action  of  the  past.”  Yet 
here,  again,  we  must  conclude  that  if  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  life  is  to  be  interpreted  in  terms  of  this 
acquisition,  other  thousands  must  be  pro¬ 
nounced  uncultured,  and  minus  that  which 
human  life  is  for.  Still  another  authority  de¬ 
fines  culture  as  “an  ensemble  of  literary  taste, 
esthetic  sensibility  and  refined  manners,”  a 
trio  of  accomplishments  scarcely  attainable 
save  as  leisure  and  wealth  combine  to  furnish 
the  prerequisites.  How  then  shall  we  answer 
our  question  in  terms  of  culture?  These  defini¬ 
tions  bring  us  no  closer  to  a  satisfying  answer 
than  we  were  before. 

There  is  indeed  a  conception  of  culture,  fun¬ 
damentally  ethical,  which  might  serve  our  pur¬ 
pose.  And  just  here,  by  way  of  anticipating 
the  true  answer,  a  word  may  be  said  of  it.  It 
is  the  kind  of  culture  that  results  from  looking 
upon  the  world  as  a  vast  gymnasium  and  hu¬ 
man  beings  as  existing  in  it  for  exercise,  for 
the  development  of  all  their  powers  of  head 


28  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


and  heart  and  will — that  totality  of  faculties  to 
which  we  give  the  name  soul.  Every  calling 
may  bear  witness  to  such  culture. 

Thus,  for  example,  the  civil  engineer  who 
“trestled”  the  great  gulch  in  the  Siskiyou 
mountains  achieved  one  of  the  world’s  tri¬ 
umphs  in  railroad  construction.  But  the  su¬ 
preme  significance  of  the  trestle  lies  not  in  its 
service  to  the  tourist  and  the  commercial 
world ;  rather  does  its  greatest  value  lie  in  the 
mastery  of  mind  over  matter  which  it  sym¬ 
bolizes,  in  the  developed  mentality  of  the  engi¬ 
neer  and  architect  through  the  difficulties  over¬ 
come,  the  problems  solved,  the  lessons  learned 
while  the  work  was  in  progress.  The  testi¬ 
mony  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  the  master-mind 
of  the  Renaissance,  is  to  the  same  effect.  He, 
the  man  of  myriad-mindedness,  confessed  that 
the  ultimate  worth  of  his  artistic  achievements 
lay  not  in  the  prospective  service  they  might 
render  to  people  of  aesthetic  sensibility,  but  in 
the  reaction  of  his  creative  energy  upon  his 
own  personality,  making  him  more  fully  and 


CULTURE 


29 


more  deeply  a  man.  And  this  experience  of 
the  engineer  and  the  artist  may  have  its  pre¬ 
cise  parallel  in  every  other  vocation,  even  in 
the  lowliest  and  least  conspicuous.  No  matter 
what  the  calling  in  which  a  man  or  woman  is 
engaged,  each  must  measure  its  value  not  only 
in  terms  of  the  particular  utilitarian  end  which 
it  may  serve  but  also  (and  primarily)  in  terms 
of  what  it  does  for  personal  development  in 
the  way  of  increased  skill,  widened  vision, 
deepened  patience  and  fidelity  to  one’s  task. 
Here  then  is  a  conception  of  culture  that  re¬ 
lates  not  to  any  particular  kind  of  attainment, 
be  it  in  the  realm  of  science,  or  of  art,  or  of 
any  other  vocation,  but  which  relates,  rather, 
to  the  interior  reaction  of  the  given  attainment 
upon  personality — a  conception  of  culture, 
forsooth,  that  has  universal  applicability  be¬ 
cause  such  inward  culture  (essentially  ethical) 
is  attainable  by  all  human  beings  whatever 
their  station  or  calling  in  life  may  be. 

But  in  view  of  the  variety  of  interpreta¬ 
tions  put  upon  the  word  “culture,”  and  par- 


30  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


ticularly  the  popular  connotation  which  makes 
it  stand  for  what  the  majority  of  mankind  do 
not  possess,  we  shrink  from  using  it  to  describe 
what  human  life  is  for.  True,  this  last  of  the 
definitions  offered  might  well  justify  accept¬ 
ance  of  “culture”  as  an  answer  to  our  ques¬ 
tion.  But  to  be  of  practical  service  the  term 
would  have  to  be  always  accompanied  by  this 
definition. 


V 


THE  KEY  TO  A  SATISFYING  ANSWER 

Thus  far  we  have  taken  account  of  four 
popular  answers  to  the  query  with  which  a 
philosophy  of  life  is  primarily  concerned,  and 
we  have  found  them  to  be  alike  unsatisfying. 
Without  pausing  to  consider  other  popular 
answers  that  might  be  offered,  and  that  would 
prove  to  be  as  inadequate  as  the  foregoing,  let 
us  turn  at  once  to  the  key  which  makes  a  sat¬ 
isfying  answer  possible.  Ask  the  question  once 
more,  but  with  emphasis  on  the  word  “human” 
— What  is  human  life  for?  So  to  ask  it  is  to 
fix  attention  on  the  fact  that  man  has  some¬ 
thing  distinctive  about  him,  possessing  charac¬ 
teristics  that  differentiate  him  from  all  else  that 
lives.  Plants,  we  say,  are  living  things.  They 
are  characterized  as  a  class  in  that  they  take 
in,  chemically  transform,  appropriate  and  or¬ 
ganize  the  basic  energies  of  sun,  soil  and  air; 

31 


32  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


but  they  have  not  the  autonomous  power  to 
move  about  in  space;  they  are,  in  Korzybski’s 
phrase,  “binders  of  the  basic  energies  of  the 
world.”  Animals,  like  plants,  take  in,  trans¬ 
form,  organize  and  appropriate  the  energies 
of  sun,  soil  and  air  as  prepared  already  by  the 
plants.  But,  unlike  the  latter,  animals  possess 
autonomous  power  to  creep  or  crawl,  or  swim, 
or  fly,  or  run.  As  such,  animals  are  “space- 
binders.”  Man,  like  the  animals,  has  this  au¬ 
tonomous  power,  but  unlike  them,  he  revealed, 
half  a  million  years  or  more  ago,  a  strange 
new  energy,  in  virtue  of  which  civilization  was 
initiated.  It  is  “the  power  that  invents,  the 
power  that  imagines,  conceives,  reasons;  it  is 
the  power  that  makes  philosophy,  science,  art, 
and  all  the  other  forms  of  material  and  spir¬ 
itual  wealth;  the  power  that  detects  the  uni¬ 
formities  of  Nature,  creates  history,  and  fore¬ 
tells  the  future;  it  is  the  power  that  makes 
progress  possible  and  actual,  discerns  excel¬ 
lence,  acquires  wisdom,  and,  in  the  midst  of  a 
hostile  world,  more  and  more  determines  its 


A  SATISFYING  ANSWER  33 


own  destiny.  The  animals  have  it  not,  or,  if 
they  have,  they  have  it  in  a  measure  so  small 
that  wre  may  neglect  it,  as  mathematicians  neg¬ 
lect  infinitesimals  of  higher  order.  By  virtue 
of  that  familiar  yet  ever-strange  human 
power,  each  generation  inherits  the  fruit  of  the 
creative  toil  of  bygone  generations,  augments 
the  inheritance,  and  transmits  it  to  the  gen¬ 
erations  to  come;  thus  the  dead  survive  in  the 
living,  destined  with  the  living  to  greet  the 
unborn.  If  this  be  poetry,  it  is  also  fact.  Past, 
Present,  and  Future  are  not  three;  in  man 
thev  are  spirituallv  united  to  constitute  one 
living  reality.” 2  Man  is  the  “time-binder,” 
and  though  this  activity  involves  space-binding 
as  a  higher  involves  a  lower,  yet  is  the  time¬ 
binding  ability,  the  peculiar  exclusive  or 
differentiating  capacity  of  man, — invention 
breeding  invention,  science  begetting  science, 
things  done,  the  instruments  for  the  doing  of 
better  things,  every  inheritance  held  in  trust  for 
enlargement  and  for  transmission  to  future 


2  C.  J.  Keyser  in  the  Hibbert  Journal,  1922. 


34  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


man  in  the  time-building  process.  But  there 

exists  still  another  differentiation  besides  this 

set  forth  bv  the  Polish  nobleman. 

* 

Man,  the  biologist  tells  us,  is  an  animal  and 
the  highest  member  of  the  animal  kingdom. 
But  the  ethicist,  while  accepting  this  classifica¬ 
tion,  bids  the  biologist  note  that  man  consti¬ 
tutes  a  class  of  which  he  is  the  only  member. 
F or  man  is  the  only  animal  that  can  see  visions 
and  dream  dreams.  And 


As  our  dreams  are,  so  are  we; 

Our  dreams  are  but  the  mirror  of  ourselves. 
"VVe  shape  in  thought  what  soon  we  dress  in 

deeds, 

And,  what  we  daily  do  within  the  heart,  we 
grow  to  be; 

Our  visions  are  ourselves.3 


Man  is  the  only  member  of  the  animal  king¬ 
dom  who  can  see  an  ideal  and  strive  for  its 
realization.  Of  him  only  can  it  be  said  that  his 
eyes  reach  further  than  his  hands,  beyond  a 
good  he  has  grasped  to  an  ulterior  best  that 


s  Bernard  Carpenter,  “Liber  Amoris.” 


A  SATISFYING  ANSWER  35 


beckons  him.  Only  he  can  engage  in  worship 
— the  response  of  an  imperfect  soul  to  a  vision 
of  the  perfect.  To  him  alone  is  it  given  to 
feel  under  an  inner  compulsion,  like  that  which 
gives  structure  to  the  crystal,  yet  to  find  him¬ 
self  most  free  when  thus  ethically  constrained. 
Man  alone,  of  all  creatures,  is  conscious  of 
failure  and  capable  of  seeing  it  as  a  blessing. 
For  animals,  the  moment’s  choice  is  their  only 
law  and  necessity;  the  gratification  of  physical 
instincts  and  desires,  their  only  aspiration;  im¬ 
pulse  is  their  duty,  innocence  their  joy,  instinct 
their  religion.  But  man  feels  himself  living  in 
eternity  with  power  to  see  the  things  of  time 
under  the  aspect  of  eternity.  The  pallor  of 
remorse,  the  blush  of  failure,  the  sigh  of  con¬ 
trition,  the  prayer  of  aspiration  toward  the 
unattained — all  these  are  within  the  range  of 
human  experience  alone;  these  combine  to  put 
man  in  a  class  apart  from  crystals  and  trees 
and  all  the  tribes  of  animals,  intimating  that 
he  belongs  to  a  spiritual  realm,  the  mark  of 
which  is  eternality. 


36  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


Man  shares  with  the  lower  animals  a  num¬ 
ber  of  wants,  such  as  food,  shelter,  reproduc¬ 
tion;  but  when  these  have  been  satisfied  he 
and  they  part  company.  They  can  go  nQ  fur¬ 
ther,  whereas  he  has  merely  put  his  foot  on 
the  lowest  rung  of  a  ladder  that  reaches  up  to 
the  infinitely  perfect.  Man  alone  has  worth 
as  distinguished  from  value.  I  did  not  origi¬ 
nate  this  distinction.  I  should  be  proud  if  I 
had.  It  is  mine  only  by  adoption  and  medita¬ 
tion  upon  it.  Professor  Adler,  it  was,  who 
initiated  the  vital,  capital  distinction  between 
the  terms. 

Value  [he  says]  is  subjective,  the  worth  notion  is 
the  most  objective  conceivable.  That  has  value 
which  satisfies  our  needs  or  wants.  We  possess 
value  for  one  another,  for  the  reason  that  each  one 
of  us  has  wants  which  the  others  alone  are  capable  of 
satisfying  as  in  the  case  of  sex,  of  cooperation,  in 
the  vocation,  etc.  But  value  ceases  when  the  want 
or  need  is  gratified. 

Worth,  on  the  other  hand,  means  value  on 
one’s  own  account  and  man  only  has  value 


A  SATISFYING  ANSWER  37 

on  his  own  account  while  all  other  creatures 
and  tilings  have  value  with  reference  to  some 
ulterior  object  or  end.  Gold,  for  instance,  has 
value  as  a  medium  of  exchange,  or  as  a  means 
of  adornment.  Food  has  value  as  a  source  of 
sustenance.  But  man  has  value  without  re¬ 
gard  to  anything  beyond  himself  and  to  this 
the  word  “worth”  has  been  fittingly  applied. 
Man,  again,  is  the  only  creature  equal  to  shap¬ 
ing  a  world  of  his  own.  He  alone  has  achieved 
the  supreme  co-relation — the  family.  To  him 
alone  w^as  it  vouchsafed  to  see  moral  chaos  and 
forthwith  endeavor  to  convert  it  into  cosmos. 
Only  man  is  empowered  to  see  ideal  relation¬ 
ships,  and  like  the  Platonic  archetypal  “ideas” 
to  see  these  relationships  as  divine  entities  to  be 
embodied  in  terrestrial  life.  The  lion,  the  fox, 
the  vulture,  each  of  these  animals  has  a  trait 
peculiar  to  itself,  an  unchangeable  trait.  The 
lion  has  his  ferocity  fixed,  the  fox  has  his  cun¬ 
ning  fixed,  the  vulture  has  his  rapacity  fixed. 
Not  thus  is  it  with  man.  He  may  be  born  into 
the  world  with  one  or  more  of  these  traits  but 


38  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


not  only  can  he  change  them,  but,  what  is  more, 
he  feels  morally  responsible  for  the  effort  to 
change  them. 

Yea,  so  fearfully  and  wonderfully  are  we 
humans  made  that  our  finite  nature  can  find 
permanent  rest  only  in  the  thought  of  the 
infinite,  in  the  ever  closer  approximation  of  the 
human  to  the  divine.  And  in  the  effort  to 
achieve  this  advance  we  feel  that  our  life  is 
embedded  in  a  soil  deeper  than  our  own  nature, 
that  wx  stand  in  cosmic  as  well  as  terrestrial  re¬ 
lations,  giving  infinite  significance  to  our  life. 

Nay,  more,  within  each  one  of  us  there  is 
enshrined  a  constant  residuum  of  capacity  for 
improvement,  no  matter  how  many  times  we 
fail.  Beneath  the  ashes  of  our  moral  failure 
there  lies  buried  a  spark  of  potentiality,  never 
quite  extinguished  and  waiting  to  be  fanned 
into  a  flame. 

The  moral  nature  of  man,  with  its  latent 
potentialities  and  its  inability  ever  to  be  per¬ 
manently  satisfied  with  anything  short  of  the 
infinite,  endless  approximation  of  the  human 


A  SATISFYING  ANSWER  39 

to  the  divine — all  this  testifies  to  the  truth 
that  man  is  essentially  a  spiritual  being  and 
can  be  accounted  for  only  in  terms  of  a  spir¬ 
itual  origin.  This  is  what  an  ancient  Hebrew 
writer  expressed  in  the  words,  “God  made  man 
in  His  own  image.”  Just  as  an  artist  in  the 
Renaissance  sometimes  painted  a  miniature 
portrait  of  himself  in  the  lower  left  corner 
of  his  picture  in  order  to  authenticate  the  work, 
so  the  World- Artist  put  the  stamp  of  his  own 
likeness  on  man  to  attest  his  divine  origin. 
Hence  it  is  that  the  lowest  of  human  beings 
commands  our  respect  and  is  to  be  regarded  as 
our  equal;  not  that  he  actually  is  so,  but  be¬ 
cause  he  is  potentially  so,  may  become  so  by 
proper  treatment,  he  having  the  same  moral 
nature,  the  same  latent  power  as  we,  waiting 
to  be  called  forth. 

Given  all  these  possessions  and  powers  in 
virtue  of  which  we  are  human  beings,  it  be¬ 
comes  clear  to  us  what  human  life  is  for.  It 
is  for  growth,  for  soul-development,  using  the 
word  soul  to  cover  the  totality  of  noncorporea] 


40  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


powers.  What  must  the  life  of  a  being  thus 
endowed,  empowered,  gifted,  privileged  be 
for?  Assuredly  it  must  be  for  the  unfolding 
of  all  its  latent  possibilities  of  thought-power, 
will-power,  service-power. 

Given  a  being  with  characteristics  that  dis¬ 
tinguish  him  from  all  other  life-forms  on  the 
earth  and  he  can  read  his  duty  in  terms  of 
them.  Succinctly  stated  that  duty  is  as  fol¬ 
lows:  Don't  live  a  merely  sensual  life,  for 
you  are  not  an  animal.  Don’t  live  a  super¬ 
natural  life,  because  you  are  not  an  angel. 
Don’t  live  a  wicked  life,  because  you  are  not  a 
demon.  Don’t  live  an  aimless  life,  because  you 
are  not  an  insect.  Don’t  live  yesterday’s  life 
lest  vou  become  a  murmurer.  Don’t  live  to- 
morrow’s  life  lest  you  become  a  visionary. 
But  live  the  life  of  happy  yesterdays  and  con¬ 
fident  to-morrows  in  the  life  of  to-day — a  di¬ 
vinely  human  life,  because  you  are  “a  God 
though  in  the  germ.”  This  phrase  from 
4 ‘Rabbi  Ben  Ezra”  suggests  the  contribution 
which  the  supreme  poet  of  the  philosophy  of 


A  SATISFYING  ANSWER  41 


life  has  made  to  our  subject.  Browning  is  still 
the  most  spiritually  awakening  mind  in  Eng¬ 
lish  poetry.  His  message  is  one  calculated  to 
invigorate  us  with  a  divine  courage  and  pa¬ 
tience;  to  save  us  from  sinking  into  cynicism 
and  pessimism;  to  guard  us  against  that  most 
unsettling  of  all  temptations — the  temptation 
to  gauge  success  by  external  results  rather 
than  by  internal  aims.  Nay,  more,  this  poet- 
philosopher,  in  the  noblest  products  of  his 
genius,  answers  the  question — “What  is  human 
life  for — with  singular  positiveness  and  pre¬ 
cision.  In  confirmation  of  this  statement  let 
the  following  typical  quotations  suffice:  In 
“Cleon”  he  asks:  “Why  stay  we  on  the  earth 
except  to  grow?”  In  another  of  his  shorter 
poems — “The  Statue  and  the  Bust” — that 
most-misunderstood  and  least-appreciated  of 
them  all — Browning  lays  down  the  doctrine 
that  inaction,  irresolution,  dallying  with  a  pur¬ 
pose,  is  fatal  to  soul-growth : 

The  sin  I  impute  to  each  frustrate  ghost, 

Is  the  unlit  lamp  and  the  ungirt  loin. 


42  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

In  “A  Death  in  the  Desert”  we  read: 


Progress  is  man’s  distinctive  work  alone. 

Not  God’s  and  not  the  beast’s:  He  is,  they  are, 

Man  partly  is  and  wholly  hopes  to  be. 

Again,  in  the  “Parleyings”  the  poet  in¬ 
quires  : 

What  were  our  life  did  soul  stand  still  therein, 

Forego  her  strife  through  the  ambiguous  present, 

To  some  all-reconciling  future? 

Once  more,  in  “Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,”  one  of 
the  simplest  and  noblest  expressions  of  the 
poet’s  genius,  he  affirms  emphatically  and  ex- 
altingly : 


What  I  aspired  to  be 
And  was  not,  comforts  me, 

A  brute  I  might  have  been,  but  would  not 
sink  i’  the  scale. 


The  fact  that  the  human  spirit  is  always 
finite  in  actual  life  but  infinite  in  potentiality, 
the  fact  that  limitless  possibilities  reside  in 
even  the  lowest  and  most  undeveloped  soul. 


A  SATISFYING  ANSWER  43 


the  fact  that  failure  is  a  blessing  in  that  on 
the  one  hand  it  saves  us  from  sinking  into 
self-complacency  and,  on  the  other,  sustains  in 
us  a  divine  discontent ;  the  fact  that  these  com¬ 
monplace  lives  of  ours  can  be  transfigured 
through  such  agencies  as  doubt,  temptation, 
adversity,  loss,  grief;  the  fact  that  human 
personality  may  evolve  into  ever  closer  and 
closer  approximation  to  the  divine — this  is  the 
sublime  ethical  message  which  Browning 
brings  home  to  us  as  no  other  poet  of  either 
the  present  or  the  past. 

To  him  life  was  like  the  climbing  of  some 
great  mountain  whose  peaks  rise  one  above 
another,  each  summoning  us  to  reach  its  height, 
and  at  each  new  level  broadening  the  perspec¬ 
tive  and  deepening  the  content  of  our  life. 
Life  to  him  was  a  process  of  endless  growth, 
upward  and  onward  toward  that  image  of  the 
Divine  in  which  we  all  are  potentially  made. 
He  saw  that  life  is  life  only  while  there  is 
growth,  that  all  the  good  actions  of  our  yester¬ 
days  mean  only  the  acquisition  of  so  much 


44  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


moral  power  with  which  to  do  good  to-day, 
and  all  our  accumulated  knowledge  only  so 
much  intellectual  power  for  new  truth-seeking; 
nay,  both  the  intellectual  and  the  moral  power 
doomed  to  atrophy  and  death  save  as  we  re¬ 
vitalize  them  by  new  deeds  of  service  and  new 
Teachings  out  toward  the  infinite  truth. 

Boldly  and  without  fear  of  contradiction 
may  we  assert  that  soul-development,  as  our 
poet  has  defined  it,  is  a  possibility  for  every 
child  of  man.  No  circumstances,  no  conditions 
are  there,  of  which  it  may  be  said  that  they  pro¬ 
hibit  the  possibility  of  soul-growth.  Do  you 
say  you  were  born  indifferent,  selfish,  hot- 
tempered,  cold-hearted  and  cannot  therefore  be 
otherwise?  The  highest  authorities  on  heredity 
unite  in  affirming  that  you  can  and  that  the  first 
requisite  is  to  feel  you  ought  to  be  different. 
You  can  because  you  ought,  as  Kant  con¬ 
tended.  Emerson  phrased  the  same  conviction 
in  the  familiar  couplet : 

When  Duty  whispers  low,  thou  must, 

The  youth  replies,  I  can. 


A  SATISFYING  ANSWER  45 


True,  we  human  beings  are  not  responsible  for 
the  evil  tendencies  inherited  from  a  human  and 
a  brute  ancestry.  So  far  as  moral  merit  is  con¬ 
cerned,  each  one  of  us  begins  life  regardless  of 
antecedents.  The  man  or  woman  born  with  a 
craving  for  intoxicating  liquor  is  not  responsi¬ 
ble  for  that  craving.  His  or  her  responsibility 
is  only  for  the  degree  to  which  that  craving  is 
permitted  to  assert  itself,  only  for  the  effort 
put  forth  to  master  the  craving.  This  is  the 
ethical  substitute  for  the  theosophical  doctrine 
of  reincarnation  as  related  to  karma.  Instead 
of  explaining  the  character  and  condition  into 
which  each  one  of  us  has  been  born  in  terms  of 
some  earlier  incarnation  and  the  “karma”  that 
is  “working  itself  out,”  I  would  present  the 
doctrine  of  moral  merit  as  being  wholly  inde¬ 
pendent  of  antecedent  condition.  No  matter 
what  my  brute-inheritance  or  my  human  in¬ 
heritance  may  be,  I  can  strive  to  control  it,  to 
change  it,  and,  what  is  more,  I  am  conscious  of 
moral  responsibility  for  not  yielding  to  in¬ 
herited  dispositions  and  proclivities.  All  of 


46  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


us  are  born  with  both  attractive  and  repulsive 
qualities,  yet  moral  goodness  and  badness 
consists  not  in  the  possession  of  them  but 
in  wdiat  we  do  with  them.  Nor  indeed  does 
our  true  self  reside  in  any  evil  quality  save 
as  we  adopt  it  into  our  will  and  give  our¬ 
selves  over  to  it.  We  are  not  blameworthy 
for  being  attracted  to  forbidden  pleasures, 
we  are  to  blame  only  for  our  yielding  to 
them,  adopting  them  into  our  will.  Away 
with  the  preachment  that  our  moral  nature 
can  no  more  resist  behaving  as  it  does 
than  the  ripe  apple  on  the  tree  can  resist  the 
law  of  gravitation  that  pulls  it  to  the  earth. 
Away  with  the  doctrine  that  heredity,  environ¬ 
ment,  constitution,  temperament,  have  made 
us  what  we  are  and  forever  prevent  our  acting 
as  free  moral  agents.  The  advocates  of  such 
fatalism  would  fain  persuade  us  that  the  dic¬ 
tum  of  the  poet  “I  am  the  captain  of  my  soul” 
is  utter  nonsense,  that  the  real  captain  of  the 
soul  is  this  combine  of  forces  physical,  psy¬ 
chical,  sociological  that  have  made  us  what  we 


A  SATISFYING  ANSWER  47 

are.  True,  this  combine  does  exert  a  mighty 
influence  often  and  grievously,  very  often  and 
very  grievously,  yet  the  real  culprit  is  not  they, 
but  their  possessor.  He  did  the  evil  deed  and 
is  ultimately  responsible  for  the  sin.  He  might 
have  avoided  it,  because  an  originally  weak 
motive  can  be  made  the  strongest  by  persistent, 
resolute  attention  to  it,  so  that  at  last  it  dis¬ 
places  its  rival.  Such  is  the  teaching  of  mod¬ 
ern,  scientific  psychology  which  we  need  to  set 
over  against  the  false  preaching  of  present-day 
fatalism. 

To  put  forth  our  true  self,  our  thought- 
power,  our  love-power,  our  will-power,  that 
is  the  cardinal  characteristic  of  the  moral  life 
and  never  can  there  be  an  end  to  the  develop¬ 
ing  of  such  power.  This  fundamental,  eth¬ 
ical  truth,  it  was  that  inspired  one  of  the 
noblest  poems  of  our  American  literature  en¬ 
titled  “The  Eternal  WilT  by  Ella  Wheeler 
Wilcox,  and  from  which  I  quote  the  following 
lines : 


48  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


There  is  no  thing  we  cannot  overcome. 

Say  not  thy  evil  instinct  is  inherited. 

Or  that  some  trait  inborn  makes  thy  whole  life 
forlorn 

And  calls  down  punishment  that  is  not  merited. 

Back  of  thv  parents  and  grandparents  lies 
The  great  eternal  Will.  That  too  is  thine 
Inheritance;  strong,  beautiful,  divine. 

Sure  lever  of  success  for  one  who  tries. 

Pry  up  thy  fault  with  this  great  lever — -Will. 
However  deeply  bedded  in  propensity. 
However  firmly  set,  I  tell  thee  firmer  yet 
Is  that  vast  power  that  comes  from  Truth's 
immensity. 

There  is  no  noble  height  thou  canst  not  climb. 
All  triumphs  may  be  thine  in  Time’s  futurity. 
If,  whatso’er  thy  fault,  thou  dost  not  faint  or 
halt  .  .  . 

The  soul’s  divine  inheritance  is  best. 


Do  you  say,  with  the  Apostle  Paul,  that 
man  is  constitutionally  incapable  of  doing  “the 
good  that  he  would,”  of  rising  from  his  dead 
self  to  higher  things,  that  only  the  borrowed 
righteousness  of  the  Christ  can  lift  him,  that 
without  this  he  remains  morally  impotent  to 


A  SATISFYING  ANSWER  49 


improve?  Then  I  reply,  with  Jesus,  that  un¬ 
limited  moral  possibilities  reside  in  every  hu¬ 
man  soul,  making  rational  and  justifiable  his 
plea  “be  ye  perfect.”  Everywhere  in  Jesus’ 
teachings  it  is  assumed  that  despite  our  prone¬ 
ness  to  sin  inexhaustible  power  for  moral  prog¬ 
ress  is  a  permanent  asset  of  our  spiritual  na¬ 
ture.  Beneath  the  ashes  of  our  moral  failure 
there  lies  hidden  a  spark,  glowing  still  and 
capable  of  being  fanned  into  a  flame.  Else 
what  meaning  in  the  cry  “repent”?  Why  bid 
men  “do  the  divine  will,”  if  there  be  in  man 
no  constant  capacity  for  moral  progress? 

Do  you  set  up  the  plea  of  the  old  orthodox 
catechism  that  man  is  weak  and  must  petition 
a  heavenly  Father  for  help?  I  reply  with  the 
founder  of  the  Ethical  Movement  that  there  is 
a  “God-force”  in  each  human  soul  and  we 
dishonor  it  when  we  dare  to  fall  back  on  that 
ancient  theological  plea.  Alas  for  him  who 
says:  “I  have  done  the  best  I  could  and  must 
now  leave  my  destiny  in  the  hands  of  a  higher 
power.”  No  man  ever  did  the  best  of  which 


50  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


he  is  capable  in  one  day  or  in  all  the  days  of 
his  life.  The  Pharisee  in  the  New  Testament 
story  made  it  his  boast  that  he  had  done  his 
best  and  ever  since  the  world  has  looked  with 
contempt  upon  that  supercilious  soul,  while 
with  sympathy  and  pity  has  it  looked  upon  the 
poor  publican  who  smote  himself  upon  the 
breast  saying,  “God  be  merciful  to  me,  a  sin¬ 
ner.”  That  man  had  climbed  up  into  the 
heights  of  his  being  and,  looking  down  sorrow¬ 
fully  at  his  lower  self,  realized  that  he  was 
still  very  far  from  having  done  the  best  of 
which  he  felt  capable. 

Not  only  is  the  “God-force”  given  but  the 
God-way  is  also  given.  For,  there  is  a  way  of 
living  here  and  now  for  you  and  for  me,  differ¬ 
ent  indeed  for  each  one  of  us  according  to  our 
education,  environment,  calling,  yet  unalter¬ 
ably  fixed  for  each  one  of  us  and  unquestion- 
ingly  recognized  when  found. 

Let  every  young  man  and  woman  beware  of 
the  fiction  that  the  discovery  of  this  way  can 
be  postponed  till  the  period  of  youth  has  been 


A  SATISFYING  ANSWER  51 


passed.  Youth  is  indeed  the  time  for  enjoy¬ 
ment,  for  indulgence  in  sports  and  pastimes, 
but  it  is  also  the  time  for  character  and  con¬ 
viction,  for  self-dedication  to  a  worthy  pur¬ 
pose,  for  self-surrender  to  the  claims  of  con¬ 
science  and  good  judgment.  If  in  the  dawn 
of  young  manhood  and  womanhood  there  has 
been  no  aspiration  toward  these  ends  it  will 
be  well-nigh  impossible  to  reach  out  toward 
them  when  the  noontide  of  life  has  arrived. 
Let  it  not  he  forgotten  that  life  is  a  problem 
in  proportion  and  if  young  people  are  to  save 
themselves  from  moral  anarchy  there  is  but 
one  way  in  which  it  can  he  done,  namely:  By 
practicing  the  Greek  virtue  sophrosune .  For 
want  of  an  adequate  English  word  we  trans¬ 
late  this  “temperance.”  But  to  the  Greeks 
temperance  had  a  very  different  connotation 
from  what  it  has  for  us.  We  use  it  to  convey 
the  idea  of  abstinence.  Every  temperance  so¬ 
ciety  is  a  total  abstinence  society.  But  to  the 
Greeks  temperance  had  no  such  negative  im¬ 
port.  On  the  contrary,  to  them  it  had  only 


52  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


positive  significance.  It  meant  the  right  use 
of  all  things  in  right  relation  and  with  due 
regard  to  life  as  a  whole.  It  meant  seeing  the 
moral  life  not  as  a  fight  between  the  spirit 
and  the  flesh  but  as  a  task  in  organization, 
our  business  being  to  organize  our  life,  not  in 
enmity  to  any  one  instinct  or  impulse,  but 
with  due  regard  for  all — the  ultimate  aim  be¬ 
ing  “health  of  soul”  as  Plato  called  it.  Alas, 
how  often  is  shipwreck  made  of  promising  lives 
through  failure  to  see,  in  youth,  that  life  is  a 
problem  in  proportion — calling  for  the  super¬ 
vising  of  conflicting  tendencies  and  tastes  and 
maintaining  a  just  balance.  Every  young  man 
and  woman,  therefore,  as  they  set  sail  on  the 
ocean  of  life  should  first  provide  themselves 
with  a  life-chart,  then,  calling  aboard  the  crew 
of  their  faculties,  spread  the  canvas  of  con¬ 
secration  to  a  worthy  life-aim  and  steering 
out  into  the  broad  ocean  of  opportunity,  leave 
a  cargo  of  beneficent  influence  at  every  port 
they  touch.  It  may  be  that  we  cannot  have 
happiness,  as  it  is  commonly  understood.  It 


A  SATISFYING  ANSWER  53 


may  be  that  we  cannot  have  wealth,  in  the 
common  acceptation  of  the  term  as  synony¬ 
mous  with  great  riches.  It  may  be  that  poor 
health  will  handicap  us  all  our  days.  It  may 
be  that  culture,  as  the  schoolmen  conceive  it, 
will  be  forever  beyond  us.  But  we  all  can 
have  an  ever  larger  quantum  of  worth.  For 
every  time  we  see  a  fault  in  ourselves  and 
correct  it,  every  time  we  conquer  some  base 
impulse  that  would  conquer  us,  we  add  to  our 
worth.  Every  time  we  take  other  lives  into 
our  own,  or  go  out  to  them,  reaching  down  to 
hidden  beauty  or  power  and  calling  it  forth, 
we  simultaneously  call  forth  what  is  best  in 
ourselves;  we  enhance  the  spiritual  value  of 
our  life,  we  realize  anew  the  spiritual  nature 
of  our  essential  selfhood ;  we  become  conscious 
of  life  as  a  continuous  process  of  acquiring 
worth. 

Does  the  growth-process  cease  with  our 
earthly  life,  and,  if  so,  can  we  say  we  have 
a  satisfying  answer  to  our  question?  This 
is  the  second  of  the  two  paramount  issues 


54  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

which,  at  the  outset,  were  set  forth  as  involved 
in  a  philosophy  of  life — a  transcendent  aim 
and  a  destiny  for  man  worthy  of  that  aim. 
If  human  life  be  for  the  acquisition  of  worth 
and  the  process  ends  at  death,  how  shall  the 
process  be  justified?  Can  the  cosmos  be  ra¬ 
tional  and  ethical  if  man,  the  highest  product 
of  its  evolutionary  process,  be  thus  victimized 
by  death,  doomed  to  discontinue  the  pursuit 
which  alone  gave  meaning  and  sacredness  to 
his  life?  To  this  question  we  must  now  ad¬ 
dress  ourselves. 


VI 


IS  DEATH  THE  END? 

Let  it  be  said  at  once  that  for  those  who 
estimate  human  life  in  terms  of  worth  and  who 
live  for  the  higher  satisfactions  bound  up  with 
acquisition  of  it,  nothing  is  so  difficult  as  dis¬ 
belief  in  personal  survival  of  death.  Like 
Plato  and  Dante  and  Goethe  and  Browning 
they  are  forced,  by  their  own  ever  deeper  and 
intenser  moral  living,  to  believe  that  there  is 
something  within  them  that  cannot  perish. 
Professor  Adler  is  their  spokesman  when  he 
says,  44 1  admit  that  I  do  not  so  much  desire 
immortality,  as  that  I  do  not  see  how  I  can 
escape  it.  On  moral  grounds  I  do  not  see  how 
my  being  can  stop  short  of  the  attainment 
marked  out  for  it,  of  the  goal  set  up  for  it.”  4 

Well  enough  for  the  sensualist,  the  bon- 
vivant,  the  epicure,  well  enough  for  those  who 


4  Life  and  Destiny,  pp.  38,  39. 

55 


56  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

have  lived  for  the  lower  satisfactions  of  life,  to 
be  indifferent  to  its  continuance  after  death. 
But  for  those  who  have  lived  for  the  higher 
satisfactions,  the  case  is  altogether  the  reverse. 
They  simply  cannot  think  of  their  spiritual 
selfhood  as  ceasing,  just  because  the  moral  im¬ 
perative  to  pursue  the  ideal  is  unconditioned 
by  either  circumstance  or  time.  In  their  judg¬ 
ment  the  man  who  is  satisfied  with  personal 
annihilation  at  death  gives  evidence  thereby 
of  defective  spiritual  breeding.  Many  a 
thoughtful  man,  it  is  true,  finds  himself 
intellectually  driven  to  agnosticism,  or  per¬ 
haps  even  to  outright  denial  of  a  hereafter; 
but  if  his  moral  nature  does  not  revolt  at  what 
his  intellect  affirms  it  would  seem  to  indicate 
that  he  had  never  lived  the  moral  life  deeply 
and  intensely,  so  irresistibly  does  such  living 
compel  revulsion  from  the  thought  of  spiritual 
annihilation  at  death.  See  with  what  marvel¬ 
ous  condensation  of  thought  and  with  what 
melody  and  strength  in  the  exalted  movement 
of  the  lines  of  “Wages,”  Tennyson  has 


IS  DEATH  THE  END? 


57 


expressed  this  truth.  What  wages  would 
Virtue  have,  he  asks? 


She  desires  no  isles  of  the  blest,  no  quiet  seats  of 
the  just. 

To  rest  in  a  golden  grove,  or  to  bask  in  a  summer 
sky, 

Give  her  the  wages  of  going  on  and  not  to  die. 


The  man  of  moral  seriousness,  who  looks 
upon  life  as  a  sacred  privilege  and  trust,  whose 
moral  horizon  embraces  ambitions  that  are 
worthy  and  ideals  that  exalt  and  inspire;  the 
man  who  sees  what  he  ought  to  be  and  sustains 
a  silent  sorrow  at  seeing  what  he  is — that  man 
will  look  upon  survival  of  death  as  a  priceless 
boon,  not  because  it  offers  anticipated  rewards 
and  delights,  but  because  it  offers  opportunity 
for  continuing  the  great  task  of  spiritual  sculp¬ 
ture  which  here  on  earth  he  had  only  begun, 
opportunity  for  hewing  still  further,  out  of 
the  rough  marble  of  life’s  experience,  the 
statue  of  the  perfect  character;  opportunity  to 
carry  closer  to  completion  the  dimensions  of 


58  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


his  being,  to  bring  nearer  to  maturity  the  great 
life  purpose  that  here  had  time  only  to  blos¬ 
som,  or  perchance  only  to  bud. 

Nature  has  written  in  the  constitution  of 
each  human  soul  the  law  of  its  being — develop 
the  real  you  are  into  the  ideal  you  ought  to  be. 
But  the  ideal  can  never  be  completely  realized. 
As  space  is  the  infinite  in  astronomy,  as  time 
is  the  infinite  in  geology,  so  perfection  is  the 
infinite  in  ethics.  The  ideal  flies  ever  before  us 
and  it  is  often  most  passionately  pursued  when 
it  seems  furthest  away. 

Yes,  the  ideal  is  unattainable  and  loyal  pur¬ 
suit  of  the  unattainable  ideal  is  our  highest 
possible  attainment.  Most  of  us  can  climb 
only  a  short  way  up  the  mount  Perfection 
when  our  progress  is  stopped  by  death.  Here 
then,  on  the  one  hand,  is  Nature  imposing 
upon  us  the  moral  obligation  to  strive  toward 
the  Perfect;  and  here,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
Death,  seemingly  bringing  that  moral  obliga¬ 
tion  to  naught  by  cutting  off  the  loyal  pursuit 
when  it  has  little  more  than  begun.  How  shall 


IS  DEATH  THE  END? 


59 


the  riddle  be  solved,  how  shall  the  opposing 
claims  be  reconciled?  Only  two  alternatives, 
it  would  seem,  are  open  to  us.  Either  death 
is  not  the  end  and  opportunity  will  be  af¬ 
forded  for  continuing  the  ascent,  or  else  death 
is  the  end  and  Nature  defeats  her  purpose 
in  the  creating  of  man.  If  loyal  pursuit  of 
the  unattainable  ideal  be  what  Nature  decreed 
for  the  human  species,  then  Nature  would  be 
irrational  were  she  to  cut  off  that  pursuit  at 
death.  And,  if  loyal  pursuit  of  that  ideal  con¬ 
stitutes  the  right  to  pursue  it  still,  Nature 
would  be  immoral,  or  at  least  unmoral,  were 
she  to  ignore  that  right.  It  was  just  this 
double  conviction  that  led  the  lamented  Fran¬ 
cis  E.  Abbot  to  describe  immortality  as  “an 
ethical  necessity.”  Nearer  than  that  to  demon¬ 
stration  we  cannot  come,  in  the  present  state 
of  our  knowledge.  Hitherto  no  objective 
evidence  for  immortality  has  been  adduced  by 
researchers  in  the  psychical  field,  not  even  by 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  albeit  he  has  adduced  much 
that  approximates  objective  evidence.  But, 


60  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

as  he  himself  said,  in  his  address  before  the 
British  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Science,  “no  precise  bit  of  evidence  has  hitherto 
been  produced  in  favor  of  the  hypothesis  of 
discarnate  intelligence.”  Nor  has  the  subse¬ 
quent  publication  of  his  book,  Raymond given 
cause  for  modification  of  that  statement,  as 
every  careful  analyst  of  the  evidence  will  have 
observed.  Demonstration  of  immortality  as 
yet  there  is  none;  our  nearest  approach  to  it 
is  that  interpretation  of  immortality  which 
makes  it  “an  ethical  necessity.” 

The  only  rational  view  of  our  earthly  pil¬ 
grimage  is  that  of  a  progressus  ad  Parnassum, 
upward  and  onward  toward  ever  fuller  de¬ 
velopment  of  the  spiritual  potentialities 
within  us.  If  then,  when  our  earthly  pilgrim¬ 
age  ends  our  goal  is  still  infinitely  beyond  us, 
shining  like  a  star  in  the  distant  heavens 
while  we  are,  as  it  were,  in  an  abyss,  looking, 
de  profundis ,  at  the  star — what  escape  is 
there  from  the  frightful  unreason  of  such  a 
situation?  I  answer,  it  is  that  death  does  not 


IS  DEATH  THE  END? 


61 


end  the  pilgrimage ;  that  somehow,  somewhere, 
in  the  universal  plan,  provision  will  be  made 
either  for  resuming  the  interrupted  pilgrim¬ 
age  or,  if  not  that,  then  for  something  equiva¬ 
lent  thereto,  which  our  finite  minds  are 
incapable  of  conceiving. 

To  my  reason  the  only  possible  solution  of 
the  mystery  of  the  moral  life  is  the  eternality 
of  our  spiritual  selfhood.  That  ultimate 
reality  in  each  one  of  us  is  hidden,  it  cannot 
be  apprehended  as  to  what  it  is  substantively 
but  manifests  itself  only  in  its  effects,  its  at¬ 
tributes,  and  to  define  it  is  to  describe  these. 
The  essential  selfhood  is  the  fountain  source 
of  ethical  energy;  an  energy  “sui  generis , 
underivative,  unique.  And  because  it  is 
unique,  it  points  toward  a  unique ,  irreducible , 
hence  substantive  entity  in  man  from  which  it 
springs.”  5  So  speaks  Professor  Adler  in  his 
discussion  of  this  “spiritual  numen”  in  man. 
That  he  thinks  of  it  as  perduring  beyond  the 


5  An  Ethical  Philosophy  of  Life,  Felix  Adler,  p.  92.  The 
italics  are  mine. 


62  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

lifetime  of  the  “empirical  self”  is  made  clear  in 
the  following  passage  from  the  chapter  of  his 
book  on  “how  to  learn  to  see  the  spiritual 
numen  in  others.”  Here  he  writes  “The  god  in 
the  other,  the  eternal  personality  in  the  inner 
sanctuary  of  the  other,  is  the  object  that  must 
be  sought  and  touched.”  6  Here  the  eternality 
of  the  “essential  self”  is  explicitly  conceded, 
but,  mark  you,  it  is  to  be  carefully  differen¬ 
tiated  from  the  popular  conception  of  immor¬ 
tality,  with  its  “suggestion  that  new  organs 
may  replace  the  worn-out  terrestrial  body.” 


Immortality  as  popularly  held  [he  says]  involves 
the  continued  existence,  in  some  empirical  form,  of 
the  essential  central  entity  in  man.  But,  as  to  my 
empirical  self  (in  the  last  outlook  on  life)  I  let  go 
my  hold  on  it.  It  is  the  real  self,  of  which  the 
empirical  was  the  substratum,  upon  which  I  tighten 
my  hold.  Immortality,  like  creation,  is  a  bridge  be¬ 
tween  the  phenomenal  and  spiritual  levels.  Creation 
is  the  bridge  at  the  beginning,  immortality,  the  bridge 
at  the  end.  Were  I  able  to  build  the  bridge  I  should 


6  Op.  cit.,  225. 


IS  DEATH  THE  END? 


63 


know.  I  do  not  affirm  immortality.  I  affirm  the  real 
and  irreducible  existence  of  the  essential  self.7 

While  freely  acknowledging  this  capital  dis¬ 
tinction  between  “immortality”  and  “eternal 
personality,”  the  two  terms  serving  to  separate 
for  us  an  empirical  and  a  spiritual  viewpoint, 
I  am  bound  to  acknowledge  the  partial  char¬ 
acter,  the  limited  power  of  my  reason  and 
hence  I  would  refrain  from  expressing  my  solu¬ 
tion  of  the  problem  dogmatically,  as  an  un- 
debatable  proposition.  Dogma  is  assertion 
without  evidence,  affirmation  without  adequate 
reason  and  as  long  as  we  are  dealing  with  the 
essential  self,  an  “entity  which  is  itself  incog¬ 
nizable,”  dealing  with  a  postulate  that  “ethics 
cannot  get  on  without,”  we  must  practice  intel¬ 
lectual  modesty  to  the  utmost.  It  may  be, 
despite  all  our  logic,  that  in  the  universal  plan 
not  a  single  soul  shall  be  accounted  of  sufficient 
value  to  the  universe  to  warrant  its  preserva¬ 
tion.  It  may  be  that  some  altogether  different 
solution  of  the  mystery  than  that  of  soul- 
eternality  lies  hidden  at  the  heart  of  things; 


7  Ibid.,  167,  359. 


64  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

but,  that  the  solution  must  be  both  rational 
and  ethical  I  am  bound  to  believe. 

We  are  stationed  here  on  this  earth,  between 
two  great  ignorances.  For  when  we  talk  of 
origins  we  don’t  know  exactly  whence  we  came 
and  when  we  are  discussing  destiny  we  don’t 
know  exactly  whither  we  go.  What  then  re¬ 
mains  between  these  two  ignorances?  There 
remains  the  hind  of  behavior  we  adopt .  We 
have  to  choose  between  living  like  immortals 
and  living  like  the  day-fly,  dead  at  sundown. 
Grant  that  the  mystery  of  the  origin  of  things 
is  insoluble;  grant  that  the  mystery  of  the 
hereafter  is  equally  impenetrable;  there  yet  re¬ 
mains  a  higher  and  a  lower  order  of  life,  and  a 
choice  to  be  made  between  them.  Accept,  if 
you  will,  the  simile  which  likens  life  to  a  mid- 
night  sea  illumined  by  a  single  streak  of  light ; 
and  man  to  a  ship,  crossing  that  lightened 
pathway,  emerging  from  the  darkness  and 
presently  disappearing  in  the  further  dark¬ 
ness,  you  none  the  less  would  think  it  worth 
while,  even  in  that  brief  moment,  to  catch  the 


IS  DEATH  THE  EXD? 


65 


light  upon  your  sails  and  while  you  live,  to 
live  in  the  light! 

When,  in  our  pursuit  of  knowledge  concern¬ 
ing  man’s  persistence  as  a  spiritual  being,  we 
reach  the  place  where  knowledge  fails,  faith 
must  hold  sway.  The  ethics  of  investigation 
on  post-mortem  conditions  requires  of  us  that, 
having  caught  the  light  upon  our  sails,  wTe 
trustfully  steer  our  ship  forward  and  with  the 
requisite  moral  heroism  face  the  ulterior 
darkness.  If  Calderon  be  right  in  regarding 
life  as  but  a  dream,  then  ’tis  for  us  to  live  well 
throughout  the  dream  and  trust  the  waking, 
whatever  it  may  be.  Since  we  cannot  prove 
either  the  negations  of  doubt  nor  the  affirma¬ 
tions  of  faith  we  can  none  the  less 

Be  wise  in  this  dream-world  of  ours; 

Nor  take  our  dial  for  our  deity, 

But  make  the  passing  shadow  serve  our  will. 

The  story  is  told  of  a  college  president  tour¬ 
ing  the  Bernese  Alps,  and  attempting  the 
perilous  passage  over  the  Gemmi  Pass  from 
Badleuk  on  the  one  side  to  Kandersteg  on  the 


66  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


other.  When  he  reached  the  top  of  the  pass 
he  looked  vainly  about  for  the  trail  that  would 
conduct  him  to  his  destination.  All  he  saw  was 
the  merest  suggestion  of  a  trail,  the  kind  a 
mountain  sheep,  were  it  sure-footed,  would 
risk  its  life  upon,  but  scarcely  one  that  a  human 
being  would  venture.  Concluding  that  he 
must  have  mistaken  the  road  up  the  mountain 
he  was  about  to  retrace  his  steps  in  search  of 
the  right  trail  when  he  spied  a  small  Swiss  boy 
standing  about  thirty  feet  away.  4 ‘Where  is 
Kandersteg?”  he  cried.  “I  don’t  know,  sir,” 
replied  the  lad,  “but  there’s  the  road  to  it,” 
pointing  to  that  hazardous  trail.  Without 
knowing  it  that  Swiss  boy  had  stated  the  whole 
practical  philosophy  of  life.  You  don't  need 
to  see  your  destination  if  you  are  on  the  right 
road .  In  such  a  situation — and  it  is  symbolic 
of  that  in  which  we  humans  here  on  earth  find 
ourselves  stationed — only  three  alternatives 
are  open  to  us.  First,  we  can  sit  down,  if  our 
inertia  be  in  excess  of  our  motive  power. 
Second,  we  can  go  back,  if  our  desire  to  remi- 


IS  DEATH  THE  END? 


67 


nisce  be  stronger  than  our  passion  to  be 
prophetic.  Third,  we  can  go  on!  In  the 
sacred  name  of  that  constant  residuum  of  ca¬ 
pacity  for  improvement  which  resides  in  every 
one  of  us;  in  the  sacred  name  of  our  inability 
ever  to  be  permanently  satisfied  with  anything 
short  of  the  infinite,  I  say,  let  us  go  on  and 
with  moral  heroism  take  the  ethics  of  an  eter¬ 
nal  being  for  our  guide. 

Thus  in  harmony  with  the  definition  of  a 
philosophy  of  life  with  which  we  set  out  the 
particular  end  enthroned  as  sovereign  over  all 
other  ends  is,  in  a  word,  growth  or  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  ethical  energy  and  the  ultimate  per¬ 
sonal  destiny  worthy  of  that  end  is  eternality 
of  the  essential  self.  Being  spiritual  it  cannot 
perish,  though  the  “how”  of  its  persistence  lies 
wholly  outside  our  ken. 


VII 


SPIRITUAL  VALUES 

Given  such  a  philosophy  of  life,  to  what 
spiritual  values  can  we  point  as  deriving  from 
it,  what  practical  helpful  function  can 
it  fulfill  in  the  conduct  of  life?  Surely  we  do 
well  to  consider  the  subject  here  in  this  our 
Meeting  House,  our  temple  of  consecration 
and  resolve,  where  opportunity  is  regularly 
offered  for  serious  thought,  for  quiet  reflection, 
for  quickening  the  springs  of  the  moral  life, 
for  spiritual  renewal.8  Here  in  this  serene 
atmosphere  where  the  deep  things  of  the  spirit 
can  be  contemplated  with  concentration  and 
calm,  where  the  moral  ideal  makes  its  most 
powerful  appeal,  where  we  verify  the  convic¬ 
tion  that  “the  place  where  men  meet  to  seek 
the  highest  is  holy  ground” — surely  here  it 

s  The  substance  of  this  chapter  was  originally  presented  in 
an  address  before  the  Society  for  Ethical  Culture  of  New 
York. 


68 


SPIRITUAL  VALUES 


69 


is  fitting  and  desirable  that  we  dwell  upon 
this  fundamental  practical  subject — spiritual 
values  in  a  philosophy  of  life. 

On  the  homeward  voyage  from  Europe  last 
July  a  fellow  passenger  called  attention  to 
some  of  the  tragic  failures  and  glaring  contra¬ 
dictions  that  confront  us  in  every  walk  of  life, 
for  example,  the  tragic  failure  of  a  life  that 
has  lost  its  equilibrium  and  become  “a  dis¬ 
tracted  riot  of  disordered  forces”;  the  glaring 
contradiction  between  our  uncalculating  devo¬ 
tion  to  a  great  cause,  as  in  the  late  War,  and 
our  immersion  in  clashing  interests,  social  am¬ 
bitions,  selfish  success.  Could  there  be  any 
question  that  this  failure  and  this  contradiction 
betoken  the  lack  of  a  guiding  philosophy  of  life 
in  which  great  practical,  spiritual  values  in¬ 
here?  Consider  with  me  some  of  the  more  im¬ 
portant  of  these. 


VIII 


THE  BALANCED  LIFE 

Fiest,  planfulness,  connectedness,  whole¬ 
ness,  balance  is  given  to  our  life  when  gov¬ 
erned  by  a  philosophy  of  life.  It  is  forthwith 
saved  from  being  heterogeneous  and  fragmen¬ 
tary  because  it  is  overarched  and  controlled  by 
a  supreme  and  unifying  aim  which  the  phi¬ 
losophy  has  supplied.  Without  that  our  con¬ 
duct  gets  shaped  by  mere  impulse,  or  by 
expediency  when  it  might  have  a  basis  worthy 
of  respect.  Plato’s  plea  in  the  Republic  was 
for  the  planned  life,  the  life  set  in  order,  or¬ 
ganized  in  conformity  with  a  hierarchy  of 
desires  and  interests.  He  held,  as  we  have 
seen,  that  life  is  a  problem  in  proportion  and 
that  if  we  are  to  save  ourselves  from  moral  an¬ 
archy  there  is  only  one  way  in  which  it  can  be 
done,  namely,  by  practicing  sophrosune.  Such 
a  doctrine  of  balance  involved  recognition 

70 


THE  BALANCED  LIFE 


71 


of  all  our  human  instincts  and  impulses,  none 
bad  in  itself,  but  all  good  when  functioning  in 
an  organized  life,  our  business  being  to  organ¬ 
ize  it,  not  in  enmity  to  any  one  instinct  or  im¬ 
pulse,  but  with  a  due  regard  for  all. 

Perhaps  in  no  closer  way  is  Plato  related  to 
our  age  than  by  his  message  touching  the 
organized  life.  And  out  of  the  Middle  Age, 
no  less  than  from  antiquity,  comes  a  message 
bound  up  with  the  modern  need  to  achieve  the 
balanced  life. 

Last  June  while  browsing  in  a  Sicilian  book¬ 
store  I  came  upon  a  new  life  of  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi.  It  brought  home  to  me  afresh  the  inti¬ 
mate  relation  between  his  gospel  and  our 
present-day  problem  of  organizing  the  personal 
life.  Why  is  it  that  this  most  lovable  of  all 
the  medieval  Saints  stands  in  such  significant 
relation  to  us  of  the  modern  world?  The  an¬ 
swer  is  because  he  had  something  to  give  of 
which  we  are  desperately  in  need  if  the  bal¬ 
anced  life  is  to  be  ours.  He  was  strong  where 
we  are  weak,  just  as  he  was  weak  where  we 


72  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


are  strong.  His  character  shone  in  attributes 
wherein  ours  is  deficient.  A  sorry  mistake  it 
is  to  suppose  that  because  St.  Francis  belonged 
to  the  Middle  Age  he  has  nothing  for  the 
world  of  to-day.  His  intense  moral  earnest¬ 
ness,  his  profound  spirituality,  his  infinite 
tenderness  for  all  subhuman  creatures,  his  sin¬ 
cere  sympathy  with  Nature,  his  firm  grip  on 
the  truth  that  “the  wages  of  sin  is  death,” 
his  fixed  habit  of  looking  at  the  things  of  time 
under  the  aspect  of  eternity — these  six  char¬ 
acteristics  of  his  personality  we  need  in  order 
to  balance  our  absorption  in  material  interests, 
our  devotion  to  scientific  pursuits,  our  alle¬ 
giance  to  utilitarian  standards  of  progress  and 
success.  The  medieval  theology  of  St.  Fran¬ 
cis  had  elements  that  have  long  since  lost  their 
appeal,  but  the  moral  and  spiritual  qualities 
that  were  his  we  sorely  need  if  we  are  to  gain 
that  balance  which  is  one  of  the  spiritual 
values  which  such  a  philosophy  of  life  as  has 
been  sketched  inspires. 


IX 


THE  THREEFOLD  INVIGORATION 

A  second  spiritual  value  appears  in  the 
power  of  that  philosophy  of  life  to  invigorate 
us  with  a  divine  patience  and  heroism.  For, 
as  we  have  seen,  it  is  a  fleeing  goal  that  we  pur¬ 
sue — endless  approximation  of  an  unattain¬ 
able  ideal.  Only  in  what  is  infinite  can  the  soul 
find  permanent  satisfaction,  and  so  we  cou¬ 
rageously  face  the  ages  in  which  the  elimination 
of  brute-inheritance  will  be  slowly  and  pain¬ 
fully  achieved  by  the  human  race  and  the  way 
prepared  for  positive  spiritual  acquisitions 
such  as  it  has  not  entered  into  the  heart  of  man 
to  conceive.  Moreover,  in  the  wake  of  this 
spiritual  value,  comes  the  precious  asset  of  en¬ 
thusiasm  without  which  no  worth-while  work 
can  ever  be  done.  Nay,  more,  there  comes  also 

the  call  to  baptize,  in  the  tears  of  our  disap- 

73 


74  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


pointment,  those  cherished  ideas  of  our  philoso¬ 
phy  with  which,  perchance,  our  dearest  friends 
have  not  sympathized,  and  mature  them  into 
unqualified  worthiness.. 


X 


POISE  IN  BEREAVEMENT 

The  gain  of  inward  calm,  composure,  poise, 
when  disquieted  and  shaken  by  adversity, 
bereavement,  grief — this  is  a  third  spiritual 
value  of  which  account  must  be  taken.  How 
often  have  we  seen  people  go  all  to  pieces, 
as  we  say,  under  the  crushing  blow  of  some 
tragic  experience  when  they  might,  by  the  aid 
of  a  philosophy  of  life,  have  been  proof  against 
spiritual  disaster.  True  it  is  that  in  the  first 
days  of  a  deepening  grief  we  are  unresponsive 
to  everything  except  the  silent  sympathy  of 
understanding  souls.  When  the  heart  is  heavy 
with  the  dull  sense  of  an  irreparable  loss  the 
mind  refuses  to  act,  but,  as  the  sorrow  deepens 
down,  the  hour  comes  in  which  our  philosophy 
of  life  can  help  us,  and  we  exchange  “the  spirit 
of  heaviness  for  the  garment  of  praise.”  Our 
foremost  witness  to  this  truth  is  Tennyson.  In 

75 


76  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


his  spiritual  masterpiece,  “In  Memoriam” 
(which  surpasses  his  artistic  masterpiece,  “The 
Idylls  of  the  King,”  in  the  universality  of  its 
appeal),  Tennyson  recorded  the  spiritual  con¬ 
dition  in  which  he  found  himself  when  bereft 
of  his  dearest  friend,  Arthur  Henry  Hallam, 
the  friend  whom  he  described  as  “more  than 
my  brothers  are  to  me.”  In  the  sixteenth 
canto  of  the  poem  Tennyson  tells  us  that 

The  shock  so  harshly  given 
Confused  me  like  the  unhappy  bark 
That  strikes  by  night  a  craggy  shelf. 

And  staggers  blindly  ere  she  sink 

And  stunned  me  from  my  power  to  think 

And  all  my  knowledge  of  myself ; 

And  made  me  that  delirious  man 
Whose  fancy  fuses  old  and  new, 

And  flashes  into  false  and  true, 

And  mingles  all  without  a  plan. 

But  as  the  sorrow  deepened  down,  the  poet 
came  to  himself,  and  by  means  of  his  philoso¬ 
phy  of  life  attained  those  heights  of  serene 
faith  and  spiritual  joy  to  which  we  climb  in 
the  closing  cantos  of  the  poem.  Browning, 


POISE  IN  BEREAVEMENT  77 


too,  in  the  poetry  dealing  with  immortality, 

testified  to  a  like  experience  when  death  had 

outwardly  separated  him  from  her  to  whom 

he  addressed  that  noblest  invocation  ever 

written  bv  a  man  in  honor  of  a  woman : 

%/ 

O  Lyric  Love,  half  angel  and  half  bird 
And  all  a  wonder  and  a  wild  desire 

•  •#••••• 

Never  may  I  commence  my  song  to  God 
Who  first  taught  song  by  gift  of  thee, 

Except  with  bent  head  and  beseeching  hand 
That  still  despite  the  distance  and  the  dark. 

What  was  again  may  be,  some  interchange 
of  grace, 

Some  splendor  once  thy  very  thought, 

Some  benediction  anciently  thy  smile.9 


9  See  “La  Saisiaz”  and  the  close  of  “Paracelsus.” 


XI 


PROOF  AGAINST  PRACTICAL  SKEPTICISM 

Its  power  to  protect  us  against  the  pre¬ 
vailing  practical  skepticism  must  be  set  down 
as  a  fourth  spiritual  value  attaching  to  the 
philosophy  of  life  we  have  outlined.  This 
practical  skepticism  has  taken  on  many  a 
sinister  form  and  given  birth  to  shallow  stand¬ 
ards  and  loose  relations  in  business  and  social 
life.  By  no  means  is  it  to  be  confused  with 
that  usage  of  the  term  which  identifies  it  with 
irreligion  and  which  a  distinguished  divine  of 
New  York  City  described  as  “the  most  dan¬ 
gerous  characteristic  of  our  time.”  But  I, 
for  one,  must  beg  to  take  issue  with  this 
identification.  One  has  only  to  recall  the 
derivation  of  the  word  “skepticism”  to  appre¬ 
ciate  what  a  mistaken  notion  the  noted  clergy¬ 
man  entertains.  The  word  is  derived  from  the 

78 


PRACTICAL  SKEPTICISM  79 

Greek  sheptomai ,  which  means,  “I  shade  my 
eyes.”  The  skeptic  in  religion  is  one  who 
shades  his  eyes  from  prejudice,  partiality, 
predilection,  in  order  that  he  may  look  stead¬ 
fastly,  clearly  and  without  bias  at  the  object 
of  his  contemplation.  Skepticism  in  the  do¬ 
main  of  religion  has  ever  been  a  sine  qua  non 
of  progress. 

Skepticism  is  the  purgatory  through  which 
the  thinker  must  needs  pass  on  his  way  to  the 
paradise  of  truth.  Skepticism  is  the  germ  out 
of  which  the  creed  of  the  future  will  be  evolved, 
because  the  creeds  of  to-day  represent  the 
satisfied  doubts  of  past  ages.  Faith  is  strong 
only  as  it  puts  beliefs  to  the  proof.  Fear 
and  laziness  can  accept  them ;  it  takes  courage 
and  consecration  to  question  them.  Revert¬ 
ing  once  again  to  “In  Memoriam,”  we  find, 
in  the  ninety-sixth  canto  those  noble  stanzas  in 
which  Tennyson  dealt  with  the  blessed  minis¬ 
try  of  doubt  as  manifested  in  the  spiritual 
experience  of  his  dearest  friend: 


80  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


He  faced  his  doubts  and  gathered  strength, 

He  would  not  make  his  judgment  blind 
He  faced  the  spectres  of  the  mind. 

And  laid  them;  thus  he  came  at  length 
To  find  a  stronger  faith  his  own. 

But  now  in  glaring  contrast  to  this  noble 
skepticism  that  questions  with  open  eyes  there 
is  a  practical  skepticism  that  questions  with 
closed  eyes  and  against  which  we  need  to  be 
proof.  It  is  the  skepticism  of  Pontius  Pilate 
who,  when  Jesus  declared  he  came  to  “bear 
witness  to  the  truth,”  replied  sneeringly  and 
without  waiting  for  an  answer,  “What  is 
truth?”  It  is  the  skepticism  of  the  United 
States  Senator  who  boldly  and  unblushingly 
said,  “Ideals  have  nothing  to  do  with  poli¬ 
tics;  they  have  their  rightful  place  in  art, 
poetry,  religion,  but  in  politics  they  are  irrele¬ 
vant,  immaterial  and  incompetent.”  It  is  the 
skepticism  of  the  famous  coal  magnate  who 
told  the  Industrial  Relations  Commission  that 
“the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  has  no  bearing 
upon  big  business,”  the  implication  being  that 
Jesus,  having  had  acquaintance  with  only 


PRACTICAL  SKEPTICISM  81 


retail  business,  bis  precepts  were  not  intended 
for  wider  application. 

It  is  the  skepticism  of  the  college  student 
who  came  to  me  with  the  query,  “Suppose  I 
do  cheat,  lie,  gamble;  suppose  I  am  a  bit 
loose  in  my  relations  with  women;  what  dif¬ 
ference  can  it  make?’'  What  is  going  to  save 
these  victims  from  the  practical  skepticism 
with  which  their  moral  nature  has  become  dis¬ 
eased?  What  is  going  to  save  you  and  me 
from  the  danger  of  contagion?  I  answer,  and 
without  hesitation — Nothing  but  becoming 
firmly  grounded  in  a  philosophy  of  life  that 
makes  soul-development,  as  already  defined, 
the  master  passion  and  sovereign  aim  of  life, 
the  most  worth-while  end  to  which  all  other 
ends  shall  be  subservient. 


XII 


MODERN  DISCOVERIES  AND  RELIGIOUS 

ANCHORAGE 

Without  professing  to  exhaust  the  totality 
of  spiritual  values,  let  me  add  to  those  already 
enumerated  a  fifth,  one  that  is  bound  up  with 
the  marvelous  discoveries  that  have  so  incal¬ 
culably  enriched  the  modern  world,  and  at  the 
same  time  undermined  the  foundations  of 
much  that  we  once  believed.  And  here  the 
spiritual  value  of  our  philosophy  of  life  con¬ 
sists  in  its  enabling  us  to  face  fearlessly  the 
losses  entailed  because  of  the  anchorage  it 
supplies. 

These  discoveries  have  been  such  as  to 

drive  us  into  the  intellectual  arena,  compelling 

us  to  fight  for  our  faith  and  to  decide  whether 

there  is  still  an  enduring  basis  on  which  the 

superstructure  of  our  conduct  may  rest.  In 

the  sciences  of  astronomy,  biology,  and  com- 

82 


MODERN  DISCOVERIES  83 


parative  religion — to  mention  only  three — dis¬ 
coveries  have  been  made  that  have  shocked  us 
out  of  the  faith  of  our  childhood  and  forced 
us  to  readjust  our  thought  to  a  new  order  of 
belief.  Let  me  take  an  illustration  from  each 
one  of  these  three  to  make  my  thought  more 
clear.  Prior  to  the  modern  era  it  was  every¬ 
where  believed  that  our  earth  is  the  fixed) 
center  of  the  solar  system,  that  all  the  celestial 
bodies  were  created  for  the  sole  purpose  of 
benefiting  the  earth  and  man,  that  God  placed 
the  sun  in  the  heavens  to  give  man  light  by 
day,  and  the  moon  in  order  that  he  might  have 
guidance  by  night.  So  long  as  these  ideas  were 
entertained,  it  was  easy  enough  to  believe  that 
God’s  chief  concern  was  man,  and  that  his 
principal  occupation  was  ministering  to  the 
welfare  of  man.  But  when  it  became  dis¬ 
covered  that  our  earth  is  a  mere  “suburb  of 
the  universe,”  that  the  sun  is  small  compared 
to  the  vast  bodies  in  the  unbounded  space 
beyond,  that  the  solar  system  itself  is  merely 
“a  fragment  in  an  abyss  of  suns  and  worlds,” 


84  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

that  each  of  the  multitude  of  stars  is  itself  a 
sun  with  attendant  planets  and  possibly  in¬ 
habited  by  intelligent  beings — when  all  these 
discoveries  were  brought  to  light,  we  recalled 
the  words  of  the  Hebrew  psalmist  and 
freighted  them  with  a  fuller  content  of  mean¬ 
ing  than  was  possible  for  him,  “What  is  man 
that  Thou  art  mindful  of  him?”  Similarly  in 
the  field  of  biology  it  was  formerly  believed 
that  man  had  been  specially  created,  by  divine 
fiat,  six  thousand  years  ago,  and  that  all  plants 
and  animals  below  man  were  created  solely  for 
the  benefit  of  man,  the  lord  of  creation.  While 
such  ideas  as  these  were  entertained,  it  was 
easy  enough  to  believe  that  man  was  the  most 
important  object  in  the  scheme  of  things.  But 
when  it  became  discovered  that  there  has  been 
an  onflowing  stream  of  creation  from  asons 
upon  aeons,  an  evolutionary  creative  process 
still  unfinished,  that  the  creatures  below  us 
have,  at  least  in  germ,  every  characteristic 
that  marks  our  nature ;  when  it  was  discovered 
that  the  perfect  man — the  man  who  harmo- 


MODERN  DISCOVERIES 


85 


niously  develops  all  the  possibilities  of  his 
many-sided  nature  into  a  rounded  life — be¬ 
longs  to  the  dim  future,  and  never  existed  in 
any  past — again  we  were  made  exceeding 
humble  and  forced  to  ask  the  question,  “What 
can  we  dare  to  believe  concerning  the  spirit 
of  man  and  his  destiny?” 

Again,  until  quite  recently  it  was  believed 
by  all  Christians  that  the  religion  in  which 
they  happened  to  be  reared  is  the  only  true, 
divine,  universal  religion,  and  that  all  other 
religions  must  therefore  be  gauged  according 
as  they  agree  or  disagree  with  this  perfect 
standard.  But  one  day  the  science  of  com¬ 
parative  religion  was  born,  and  while  still  in 
its  infancy  it  brought  to  light  the  truth  that 
the  old-time  classification  of  religions  into  true 
and  false,  natural  and  revealed,  human  and 
divine,  is  obsolete.  A  hundred  races  means  a 
hundred  faiths,  each  with  its  own  origin,  his¬ 
tory,  ideals ;  hence  the  naivete  of  thinking  that 
the  religion  in  which  we  happened  to  have  been 
born  is  the  one  only  true  religion,  and  the 


86  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


standard  whereby  the  worth  of  all  others  is 
to  be  gauged.  Now,  in  the  face  of  these  dis¬ 
quieting  discoveries,  we  were  forced  to  re-open 
questions  we  had  long  considered  closed,  we 
were  forced  to  test  once  more  the  foundation 
upon  which  the  superstructure  of  our  conduct 
had  been  built.  Is  this  universe  “a  fortuitous 
concourse  of  invisible  atoms,”  or  is  there  a 
great  purpose  behind  the  complex  maze  of 
things?  Are  we  dust  merely  that  returns  to 
dust,  or  does  the  stamp  of  eternality  rest  upon 
our  essential  selfhood?  Is  our  character  de¬ 
termined  by  a  combination  of  biological  and 
sociological  forces,  or  are  we  in  truth  free 
moral  agents?  Do  heredity  and  environment 
decide  how  our  moral  nature  is  going  to  be¬ 
have,  or  is  our  conduct  under  our  own  control? 
These  are  among  the  ultimate  questions  we 
have  been  compelled  to  re-open  and  re-answer, 
and  relate  to  our  philosophy  of  life  as  the 
solid  substratum  for  the  moral  life. 


XIII 


NO  FINAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

From  what  has  been  said  it  is  clear  that 
there  can  be  no  final,  finished  philosophy  of 
life  valid  for  all  time.  Absolute  truth  is  not 
for  finite  man.  A  finite  being  living  in  an 
infinite  universe  cannot  hope  ever  to  say  the 
last  word  on  any  subject.  And  yet  the  one 
unpardonable  sin  of  the  intellect  is  to  despair 
of  itself,  for  there  lies  ever  before  it  the  task 
of  acquiring  more  truth  though  it  never  attain 
all  the  truth.  Agnosticism  is  a  way  station 
indeed,  not  a  terminus.  Well  enough  it  was 
for  George  Eliot  and  Harriet  Martineau  to 
“accept  the  universe”  and  die  in  the  belief  that 
doors  they  found  closed  would  never  again  be 
opened.  But  nevertheless  all  of  them  have 
since  been  re-opened  and  no  one,  we  realize 
to-day,  can  close  them  forever.  No  lesson  do 
we  need  to  learn  more  fully  than  that  the  seem- 

87 


88  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

ingly  final  beliefs  of  our  time  are  but  passing 
adjustments  to  a  universe  vaster  than  all 
human  views  of  it.  To  be  sure,  there  is  always 
an  element  of  truth  in  the  dominant  ideas  of 
one’s  time,  but  never  do  they  represent  all  the 
truth.  Fitting  and  serviceable  it  is  that  the 
ideas  be  formulated,  but  most  essential  it  is 
that  they  be  also  “held  fluid”  as  simply  tran¬ 
sient  productions  of  the  free  and  growing 
mind,  certain  to  pass  or  to  be  fused  with  other 
ideas  as  the  grasp  of  truth  gains  in  firmness 
and  inclusiveness. 

Our  little  systems  have  their  day, 

They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be. 

So  wrote  England’s  poet  laureate  some 
seventy  years  ago,  and  we  have  to  note  con¬ 
cerning  his  statement  that  it  is  just  as  natural 
and  inevitable  that  these  systems  should  cease 
to  be  as  that  they  should  have  served  their 
day.  All  the  way  from  Plato  to  Professor 
Adler,  each  system  represents  simply  “one 
man’s  adjustment  to  the  sum  of  things.”  And 


NO  FINAL  PHILOSOPHY  89 


the  value  of  each  system  for  us  is  that  it  serves 
as  a  challenge  to  clarify  our  own  thinking 
and  to  stimulate  us  in  the  effort  to  make  our 
own  readjustments  as  occasion  may  require. 
Future  discoveries  will  undoubtedly  necessi¬ 
tate  new  adjustments  of  thought  and  conduct, 
but  surviving  all  changes  I  see  two  cardinal 
convictions,  permanent  pillars  of  a  philosophy 
of  life  and  crowned  with  such  spiritual  values 
as  have  here  been  enumerated.  They  concern 
the  spiritual  nature  of  man,  its  latent  poten¬ 
tialities  and  its  allegiance  to  what  is  infinite 
as  the  sole  source  of  permanent  satisfaction, 
be  its  attainment  never  so  great.  Let  a  further 
word  on  each  of  these  imperishable  realities 
be  added. 


XIV 


THE  CONTRIBUTION  OF  JESUS 

The  conviction  that  our  moral  nature  pos¬ 
sesses  latent  potentialities  to  which  no  limit 
can  be  set  lies  at  the  heart  of  the  gospel  of 
J esus.  Meaningless  would  have  been  his  plea 
“be  ye  perfect”  had  he  not  held  that  every 
human  soul  is  endowed  with  potential  divine 
humanity.  We  meet  the  inspiring  conviction 
first  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  Like  a 
golden  thread  it  runs  all  through  the  discourse. 
To  Jesus  there  was  something  sacred  attaching 
to  each  human  being  because  of  the  potentiali¬ 
ties  hidden  there.  And  because  of  these  he 
conceived  of  love  in  a  fashion  far  removed 
from  the  conventional  popular  connotation  of 
the  term.  According  to  Jesus,  to  love  an¬ 
other  is  to  act  toward  him  as  one  who,  no  mat¬ 
ter  what  the  overt  evil  act  he  has  committed, 
yet  has  hidden  within  him  a  potential  divine 
humanity. 


90 


CONTRIBUTION  OF  JESUS  91 


To  love  the  good,  the  noble,  the  refined — 
that  is  easy  enough;  but  to  love  the  base,  the 
boorish,  the  vulgar,  ah,  that  is  so  difficult  we 
call  it  divine.  According  to  the  earliest  of  the 
Gospels  (Mark),  the  first  man  Jesus  ever 
invited  to  his  house  was  one  Levi,  a  publican, 
a  collector  of  taxes  from  Palestinian  Jews  for 
the  Roman  government.  As  such  Levi  was  a 
member  of  the  most  despised  caste  in  the  com¬ 
munity.  Grouped  with  4 'sinners”  are  the 
"publicans”  in  the  Gospel  story,  and  together 
they  constituted  the  lowest  stratum  of  Jew¬ 
ish  society  in  Jesus’  day.  Now  this  publican, 
when  at  J esus’  house,  gave  an  account  of  him¬ 
self,  but  so  poor  and  forbidding  was  it  that 
Jesus  could  not  bring  himself  to  believe  it 
represented  the  total  truth  about  the  man. 
He  must  have  hidden  within  the  recesses  of 
his  moral  nature  something  finer  than  what 
was  revealed,  and  the  story  ends  with  the  state¬ 
ment  that  Jesus  found  what  he  suspected  was 
there,  the  germ,  the  ineradicable  germ  of  a 
nobler  manhood.  Recall  some  of  the  other 


92  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


personalities  that  came  into  Jesus’  presence 
and  had  their  hidden  potentialities  revealed  to 
them.  Peter,  the  sturdy  fisherman,  comes,  and 
Jesus  sees  behind  the  impetuosity  and  in¬ 
stability  of  the  man  a  capacity  for  loyalty  and 
leadership.  And  this  same  Peter  it  was  who 
subsequently  became  the  head  of  the  Messianic 
community  at  Jerusalem.  Judas  comes,  with 
his  kiss  of  betrayal,  but  deeper  than  his  dis¬ 
loyalty  was  a  remorse  kindled  in  the  man 
through  memory  of  the  benign  influence  of  his 
Master.  The  woman  of  Samaria  comes,  and 
has  revealed  to  her  a  conception  of  worship 
and  spirituality  to  which  the  response  was 
instantaneous  because  Jesus  did  but  make 
explicit  what  the  woman  had  the  power  to 
appreciate.  The  woman  who  was  a  “sinner” 
comes,  and  to  her  is  revealed  a  virtue  and  a 
moral  capacity  which  she  imagined  had  gone 
out  of  her  forever.  One  after  another  they 
come,  out  of  the  shadow  into  the  penetrating 
ray  of  Jesus’  personality,  and  lo,  a  transfigur¬ 
ing  light  is  shed  upon  their  insignificant  lives. 


XV 


THE  ETHICS'  OF  JESUS  AND  THE 
ETHICAL  MOVEMENT 

This  gospel  of  the  moral  nature  of  man 
with  its  latent  potentialities  for  approximating 
the  divine  and  the  doctrine  of  love  bound  up 
with  it,  has  its  analogues  in  the  central  teach¬ 
ing  of  the  Ethical  movement.  It  makes  com¬ 
mon  cause  with  the  ethics  of  Jesus  at  this 
point  more  than  at  any  other.  In  confirmation 
of  this  truth  permit  me  to  quote  the  following 
passage  from  the  magnum  opus  of  the  founder 
of  that  movement : 

Seek  and  ye  shall  find.  But  what  exactly  is  it 
that  we  are  to  seek?  The  spiritual  nature.  But 
what  is  the  spiritual  nature?  The  spiritual  nature 
in  another  is  the  fair  quality  distinctive  of  that  other 
raised  toward  the  Nth  degree.  We  are  to  paint 
ideal  portraits  of  our  spiritual  associates.  We  are 
to  see  them  in  the  light  of  what  is  better  in  them 

as  it  would  be  if  it  were  transfigured  into  the  best. 

93 


94  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


The  power  of  ideally  appreciating  others,  of  see¬ 
ing  them  in  the  light  of  their  possible  best  and  the 
feeling  of  love  consequent  on  this  vision  is  the 
mightiest  lever  for  transforming  evil  into  good,  and 
for  sweetening  the  embittered  lives  of  men.  Spiritual 
appreciation — in  its  supreme  form  it  is  the  art  of 
going  down  to  the  lowest  of  human  beings  and 
making  them  think  well  of  themselves  because  of  pos¬ 
sibilities  in  their  nature  they  themselves  hardly 
surmise.10 

10  Op.  cit.,  231,  232. 


XVI 


THE  NEVER-ENDING  PURSUIT  OF 
THE  IDEAL 

A  word  now  concerning  the  second  of  the 
two  permanent  pillars  of  a  philosophy  of  life 
with  its  implied  spiritual  values — the  refusal 
of  our  moral  nature  ever  permanently  to  be 
satisfied  with  anything  short  of  the  infinite. 

To  be  satisfied  with  aught  of  progress  we 
have  achieved  on  the  assumption  that  we  can 
rise  no  higher,  spells  self-stultification. 

It  is  said  that  when  the  Danish  sculptor, 
Thorwaldsen,  had  completed  a  certain  statue 
he  exclaimed,  “At  last  I  have  realized  my 
ideal.”  Contrast  with  this  the  conviction  of 
Macready  who,  after  his  hundredth  impersona¬ 
tion  of  Hamlet,  remarked,  “Ah,  this  dear,  dear 
Hamlet;  the  true  artist  never  dwells  fondly 
upon  wrhat  he  has  achieved  but  is  ever  looking 
forward  to  an  ideal  still  beyond  his  reach.”  A 

95 


96  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 


discontent  that  is  truly  divine  never  ceases 
with  any  attainment  however  high.  For  the 
man  whose  ideal  is  ahead  of  his  achievement 
there  is  always  hope,  even  though  that  ideal  he 
low;  but  for  the  man  who  has  sunk  his  ideal 
to  the  level  of  his  achievement  there  is  no 
hope  even  though  that  achievement  be  high. 
Ever  is  there  within  us  unused  power  and 
always  something  beyond  the  best  we  have 
done  waiting  for  realization.  Beyond  the 
righteousness  we  know  is  that  Righteousness 
‘‘the  hem  of  whose  garment  has  never  yet  been 
touched,  the  plenitude  of  whose  being  has 
never  yet  been  revealed,  the  radiance  of  whose 
glory  has  never  yet  been  uncloaked ;  the 
Righteousness  of  whose  ineffable  light  our 
highest  visions  are  but  feeble  rays  and  yet, 
in  whose  service,  even  now,  amid  the  conten¬ 
tions  of  the  time,  we  can  gain  the  precious 
boon  of  inward  calm  and  peace.”  The  ideal 
grows  as  we  climb  to  it.  The  climbing  path 
never  ends  because  ever  and  anon  new  summits 
loom  into  view.  And  so  at  length  we  learn 


PURSUIT  OF  THE  IDEAL  97 


that  it  is  not  the  summit  but  the  climbing,  not 
achievement  but  growth,  that  is  life.  It  is 
depressing,  do  you  say,  to  realize  that  no 
human  attainment  is  ever  final,  that  each  new 
milestone  of  progress  marks  only  a  kind  of 
vantage  ground  from  which  we  climb  to  some 
higher  manifestation  of  power?  Then  let  the 
cheering  and  inspiring  fact  be  brought  to  mind 
that  no  statical  heaven,  however  fine  and  fin¬ 
ished,  could  ever  permanently  satisfy  us.  As 
a  temporary  resting  place  for  tired  souls  such 
a  heaven  makes  a  powerful  appeal  indeed,  but 
once  rested  and  refreshed  we  would  wish  to 
resume  the  upward  way.  In  our  nobler  moods 
at  least,  if  not  at  other  times,  we  repudiate  the 
traditional  idea  of  the  end  of  life  as  “a  good 
time  coming’’  when  achievement  will  cease  and 
life  be  a  dead  lake  instead  of  a  living  stream. 

At  Oberammergau,  on  the  morning  after 
the  Passion  Play,  I  climbed  the  Kofal,  the 
mountain  that  rises  behind  the  imposing 
theater.  The  road  was  steep,  stony  and  tor¬ 
tuous.  Here  and  there,  at  intervals  of  about 


98  A  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE 

fifty  yards,  benches  had  been  placed  to  break 
the  continuity  of  the  climb;  and  in  front  of 
each  bench  was  a  crude  picture  representing 
a  scene  from  the  closing  days  of  the  fife  of 
Jesus.  In  Roman  Catholic  countries  these 
places  on  mountain  slopes,  where  one  finds 
such  benches  and  pictures,  are  called  “Stations 
of  the  Cross.”  Thus  the  traveler  pauses  as  he 
climbs,  and  as  he  pauses  there  looks  down  upon 
him  a  great  thought  out  of  the  fife  of  the 
Nazarene.  And  so,  rested  and  refreshed,  he 
renews  the  climb  until,  at  last,  the  final  Sta¬ 
tion  of  the  Cross  is  reached.  Strip  this  inci¬ 
dent  of  its  sectarian  implications  and  what 
remains  is  a  fairly  accurate  account  of  what 
our  life  must  ever  be.  We  must  keep  climbing, 
and  we  must  get  tired,  and  we  must  have 
moments  for  rest,  for  self-collecting  and  self- 
examination,  moments  in  which  there  can  look 
down  upon  us  the  great  conception  of  the  in¬ 
finitely  perfect  to  which  we  tend. 

(i) 


THE  END 


